Movie spotlights broken public school system and how to fix it
(From The Detroit News, October 7th, 2010)
By Ingrid Jacques
No one wants to see a child cry. Yet at the Monday premiere of “Waiting for ‘Superman,'” the new documentary on education, the audience looked into the faces of several young children who shed tears because they couldn’t get into decent schools. Many of the 400 in the audience could not hold back tears, as well.
“Waiting for ‘Superman'” weaves together the stories of five children and their families from New York to Los Angeles who are trying to leave their neighborhood public schools for better-performing charter schools with their dreams hinging on the quality of their education. The documentary takes a critical look at an issue plaguing the nation but particularly Detroit and Michigan — children whose schools have failed them. Notably, it also takes on the power that teachers unions have on schools and the restrictive rules that system imposes.
In many cases, it’s not that students don’t want to learn; it’s that they don’t have good opportunities.
“If it doesn’t commit people to action, I don’t know what will,” Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, said about the movie.
Academy Award-winning director Davis Guggenheim, whose work includes “An Inconvenient Truth,” turned his lens away from global warming to expose another threat: the dire state of the nation’s public schools.
He highlights stark and upsetting statistics about the failure rates in public schools and uses the voices and images of some of the nation’s top education reformers, such as Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of the Children’s Zone in Harlem, and Michelle Rhee, chancellor of Washington, D.C., public schools, to tell the story.
Guggenheim, a self-proclaimed liberal, has said he wanted to start a national conversation about how to ameliorate U.S. schools, and he didn’t cower from tackling some of public education’s biggest impediments.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and unions as a whole are portrayed in a less than a complimentary light in the movie.
Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, attended the Royal Oak premiere with a group of AFT teachers and said he thought the film has “some truth in it” but that it was disappointing in how it portrays charter schools as generally superior and public schools as failures.
“It vilifies teachers and teachers unions,” he said.
But Mike Tenbusch, vice president of educational preparedness at the United Way of Southeastern Michigan, doesn’t think the film disparages teachers. Rather, it highlights the difficulty of being a good teacher, he said, adding that the film should get “people wanting to help.”
Reforms necessary
Whether the film will reach the acclaim and popularity of “An Inconvenient Truth” remains to be seen. But state and national education experts think the documentary could motivate adults to action when faced with the compelling facts that affect the 89 percent of children — roughly 50 million — who attend public schools.
“We shouldn’t be comfortable with this anymore,” Quisenberry said.
And the conversation has already begun. The film has caught the attention of media superstar Oprah Winfrey, who had Guggenheim on her show in September. In addition, NBC News recently aired a weeklong look at education. Such attention is a positive development, Quisenberry said.
He said the film is doing what it should by making people squirm; watching children suffer is painful, but it should force honest discussions about how to handle failing schools.
Quisenberry said he thinks the film could have long-lasting effects and could inspire more philanthropists like Robert Thompson, who has given $100 million to Detroit charter schools, to invest in education.
A few big-name donors have already announced they’ll be pumping money into schools. Winfrey said her Angel Network would donate $6 million to six charter school organizations. And Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has promised $100 million to public schools in Newark, N.J., through his Startup: Education foundation.
Startling statistics explain why the help is needed.
For example, smaller class sizes and increased per-pupil spending have not improved education. From 1971 to 2006, per-student spending increased more than 120 percent, yet the U.S. lags most other developed countries in academic performance. In 2006, U.S. students ranked 21st out of 30 countries in science literacy and 25th in math literacy.
Lindsey Burke, an education expert at the Heritage Foundation, says it is “fantastic” that “Superman” has received so much attention and that it draws awareness to necessary reforms. In a recent piece she co-wrote, Burke highlights how tough education reforms in Florida passed in 1999 are paying off today. These changes centered on school choice, charter schools and performance-based pay for teachers; and now the state’s minority and low-income students are outperforming or tied with the average “traditional” students.
Detroit could use such effective reforms. One out of every four Michigan students fail to graduate from public high school, according to the Michigan Department of Education. And Detroit Public Schools has a graduation rate of just 59 percent.
Clearly, DPS is one of the dropout factories Guggenheim refers to in the film. It is no surprise that charter schools continue to pop up around the city and draw students out of the tired public school system.
In contrast, University Prep Academy, headed by Doug Ross, consistently graduates more than 90 percent of its students and sends just as many to college or other post-secondary training. Since Michigan allowed charters in 1994, 79 have emerged in Detroit.
DPS has lost around half its enrollment — partly to charters — in the past decade. It was down to about 85,000 students in 2009 and even less this year.
While not all charter schools outperform traditional public schools, enough do, which is why some parents fight to get their kids in these schools — as seen in “Waiting for ‘Superman.'” Unfortunately, capacity constraints often force charters to hold public lotteries for applicants. A brighter future in these cases is left to chance.
According to the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, more than two-thirds of the state’s 240 charter schools have waiting lists — consistent with the national average. Two-thirds of students in charters are minorities, and more than half qualify for free or reduced lunch, but charter schools still boast an 86 percent graduation rate and better academic results.
Charter schools are highlighted as an ideal of sorts in the film, and Jennifer Cohen, an education policy analyst for the New American Foundation, thinks this could be misleading. For instance, a 2009 study from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that only 17 percent of charter schools significantly outperform traditional public schools.
Cohen said although
“Waiting for ‘Superman'” is powerful film, she’s not sure it will have an influence similar to “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Cohen said everyone’s affected by climate change, while education issues aren’t felt as uniformly.
“It’s not an education reform panacea,” Cohen said of the film. “But it could be a springboard for rational discussion.”
Keep focus on children
The documentary has the power to connect with people on a deeper level than a policy paper, said Matthew Ladner, vice president of research for the Goldwater Institute.
And even though the film focuses more on problems than solutions, it succeeds in addressing top education issues which affect students in wealthy and poor districts.
Ladner pointed to how the film comes at a telling time in U.S. politics, when some Democrats are starting to turn against teachers unions and stand up for charter schools and school choice. Ladner thinks unions are “losing the war on ideas,” which could help facilitate necessary reforms.
As for the film, Ladner expects lasting consequences. “People will be talking about it months, even years, from now,” he said.
Harrison Blackmond, Michigan director of Democrats for Education Reform and the president of Progressives for Quality Public Schools, said he hopes as many people as possible see the film in the coming weeks.
He’s encouraging the community to sign a petition on the bipartisan website DoneWaiting.org, which is striving for education reform.
“We need to set aside the adult issues, and focus on what is in the best interest for our children,” Blackmond said.