Waiting for Superman

I am at a cross roads.  Middle class inner city parent with an twenty month old daughter wondering how I should go about educating her in a United States school system that is quickly loosing ground to the global community.  "Waiting for Superman" the current documentary from Davis Guggenheim of "Inconvenient Truth" fame is framing that very question for the parental public to ponder.  In two hours he attempts to frame the debate of how to reform the current educational model in the United States. 

Davis has certainly found a villain for the problems that the current school systems are facing.  In his eyes the public school system bureaucracies and powerful teacher's unions are the primary culprits in the inefficiency and failures of the current system.  Unions that spend enormous sums of money on lobbying efforts to protect ineffective teachers from reprisal.  In contrast, successful charter models that are independent of the teacher's unions and direct school district oversight are seen as a potential answer to the problem.  Geoffrey Canada founder of Harlem's children's zone is highlighted in the film as a potential solution to the problem.  Canada chose to start his charter model in one of the poorest neighborhoods in America.  He created a network of charter schools and social programs to serve over nine thousand students in a ninety seven square block section of Harlem.  Promising every child that attends one of his his schools an opportunity to go to college.  His successes have been staggering.  Over ninety percent of the students that attend one of Canada's after school programs graduate from high school.  Comparatively, the public school model in many of these impoverished areas are graduating less than half of their students.  Why the dramatic difference? 

For Davis' the difference lies in the quality of the curriculum and more importantly the quality of the faculty providing that curriculum.  To drive this point home Davis spends time with Michelle Rhee; superintendent of the Washington DC public school system.  Rhee was appointed to her role by then mayor of Washington DC (Adrian Fenty, recently defeated in the DC mayoral election) to reform one of worst performing districts in the United States.  With no experience at the district level Rhee came in and essentially wrecked shop, closing a number of schools and firing a number of ineffective teachers.  In the process she angered numerous parents and teachers unions.  She was determined to break the old method of doing business in the DC school system.  Her most ambitious effort was to eliminate tenure for teachers in exchange for merit based salaries that could be double the current rate for highly rated teachers.  The union leaders did not even allow Rhee's proposal to come to a vote.

So what are we left with, what do we take away?  In "Waiting for Superman" we are left to watch five low income families pinning their hopes for their children on a lottery to get into a successful charter school.  We are left to see caring and concerned parents that want the best for their children praying their number is drawn from the box.  We are left to wonder about the thousands of children across the country that will not be accepted to a successful charter school and will be forced to attend what Geoffrey Canada refers to as a "Failure Factory".  As a concerned parent, I was left to wonder what my obligation is to trying to help in bridging the achievement gap that is widening for our students. I was left to wonder about how my twenty month old will fare in the current system.  Do I make the decision Davis Guggenheim made in sending his children to a private school, or do I gamble on a system that may force my child into a lottery?

Overall, I commend Davis Guggenheim for taking on such a challenging problem with "Waiting for Superman"; this film certainly does not answer all the questions, but if it starts a dialogue about the problems we are facing then it certainly has served a purpose.

PDX Film Hack