<p>A debate has been raging over why our education system is failing. A new documentary by the director of An Inconvenient Truth throws fuel on the fire</p>
Two years later, Guggenheims new film, Waiting for Superman, is set to open in New York and Los Angeles on September 24, with a national release soon to follow. It arrives after a triumphal debut at Sundance and months of buzz-building screenings around the country, all designed to foster the impression that Guggenheim has uncorked a kind of sequel: the Inconvenient Truth of education, an eye-opening, debate-defining, socially catalytic cultural artifact.</p>
<p>Among leaders of the burgeoning education-reform movement, the degree of anticipation surrounding Superman is difficult to overstate. The movie is going to create a sense of outrage, and a sense of urgency, says Arne Duncan, Barack Obamas secretary of Education. New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein concurs. Its gonna grab people much deeper than An Inconvenient Truth, because watching ice caps melt doesnt have the human quality of watching these kids being denied something you know will change their lives, Klein says. It grabs at you. It should grab at you. Those kids are dying.</p>
<p>Weingartens increasing willingness to walk the walk of reform has been even more impressive. The most vivid instance has been in Washington, where in July 2008 Michelle Rhee placed on the table a daring contract proposal: In exchange for giving up lifetime tenure and linking their pay to student performance, teachers would have been able to earn as much as $130,000 a year. (Alternatively, they could have kept their job securityalong with salary ceilings about two-thirds as high.) How did the D.C. teachers union react? As Superman shows in devastating detail, it refused even to allow a vote on the plan.
<p>I hope the movie goes into wider release so that everyone concerned with public education has a chance to see this movie. I checked the showtimes in my area and they are very limited.</p>
<p>Education is critical, and we are at a crisis point. Things have got to change.</p>
<p>I’d read that the film promotes “charter schools”. Is this true? Charter schools aren’t solving the problems here, so I wasn’t planning on seeing the movie. Has anyone seen it yet?</p>
<p>The trailer describes kids whose parents seem to be driven, much like those of us on this web site Unfortunately, most parents aren’t like us.</p>
<p>It is because I do NOT think that charters are the solution we need that I want --or need-- to see this movie. When it comes to charter schools, the jury will be out for several generations. On the other hand, there is no need to wait for a few decades more to ascertain the incredibly negative role played by the unions in the past 60 years. It is what it is! Observers should also remember that an early proponent of charter schools was none other than Al Shanker, the union leader famous for claiming that “he would start representing kids when they started paying union dues.”</p>
<p>Charter schools are not only NOT the solution, but also an abject compromise that has delayed the inevitable breakup of the monopoly that has failed children in this country, and WILL continue to fail an ever growing number of young minds. </p>
<p>If you can stand to watch the trailer again, pay attention to the children who do NOT win the lotteries. And then keep this image in mind as you see the people who are supposed to work towards solution destroy any chance of getting out of this mess by posturing and playing politicals games in which children are mere pawns. </p>
<p>Charters are delaying the inevitable, but may be helping those kids who at least have a ticket out of their underperforming schools.</p>
<p>Did you happen to catch that blurb about a school up in the Oakland, CA area that has the highest AP pass rate for Calculus? Only 1/4 of their teachers are certified by the state. It’s not a traditional school, bigger than average class sizes, but they are getting results. I will see if I can dig it up.</p>
<p>To say that an institution that provides, however flawed, yearly comparitive data cannot be judged for “several generations” is, well, odd at the very least.</p>
<p>Here’s what we know about Charter Schools; a minority of them are very successful but the majority of them either only do as well or do worse than the regular public schools in the same area. </p>
<p>Here in Texas, a very weak union state, a teacher in our district with a masters degree and twenty years of teaching tops out at $53,000 per year salary. In states with strong unions, teachers can make a living wage. Not surprisingly, the top performing states (not all of them but most of them) pay their teachers far better than the worst performing states.</p>
<p>Unions are not the enemy; fear of change is. In Washington, DC the unions and the reformers (lead by Rhee, a very important woman in the reform movement) recently made history with an agreement that keeps some of the protection that the unions provide and joins that with “pay for performance”, an end to seniority-based layoffs and the ability to fire low performing teachers no matter how long they have been employed by the school district.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the movie only captures the moment in time after the first vote, when none of the reforms were agree too in DC. A lot of people are going to vent a lot of anger at a union and it’s teachers who have already embraced the very change that reformers seek.</p>
<p>The teachers’ unions just tossed Rhee out in a Washington D.C. election. rhee was an innovative, no-nonsense reformer. The unions killed her in D.C… She will go somewhere else and keep reforming. It is the students in Washington, D.C. that lose out.</p>
<p>I think we need to completely dismantle the model of schooling that we currently use - thousands of kids and teenagers institutionally caged in together to “learn” is a recipe for disaster. Schools ought to consist of about 30 kids with a couple of teachers.</p>
<p>If it is for me, there is no need to go looking. I think that you saw the blurb in the stories presented by John Stossel. It was about Ben Chavis. </p>
<p>Yeah, I think it was that article. I can’t even keep track of all the articles I have read this week since I have been home sick! I am so bored. </p>
<p>Since you’re from Texas, do you care to comment on the KIPP schools? </p>
<p>Since you seem to criticize my statements about the “jury being out” how long do YOU believe we should have to analyze the successes and failures of the charter school movement? </p>
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<p>Are you claiming that no teacher in Texas earns more than 53,000 per year? And, fwiw, how much does that represent on a hourly basis? And, how well does that compare with the hourly salaries paid to nurses or computer technicians? </p>
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<p>Funny how the top salary of 53,000 becomes the starting salary in … Irving, Texas. </p>
<p>How does the starting salary for a teacher who graduates from one of those god awful remedial schools in Texas that target the lowest common denominator of candidates compare to the starting salary of recent graduates of selective schools? </p>
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<p>Did you happen to read the background story about the negotiations of the DC contract? Did you happen to miss when Rhee did fire the 241 ineffective teachers and notified another 741 they were in danger to be fired as well? How did Packer react to Rhee’s exercising her rights under the new agreement? </p>
<p>Part of the problem with schools’ inabilities to fire poor teachers is that they simply cannot find anyone with which to replace them. A school wouldn’t want to go through a beurocratic mess to fire a teacher whom they cannot replace. Hopefully Rhee’s model will help attract qualified teachers and allow for more flexibility regarding evaluating teachers based on merit. I’m not sure what the future holds now.</p>
<p>I think it is out the 24th. My daughter worked for our state’s Charter School Association for a summer while in college. At that time she was responsible for putting together data that compared charter schools to the closest traditional public school in terms of test scores, etc. It was a big deal when that was published because it gave such a frank comparison. Charter schools are like both traditional public schools and private schools in that there are some amazing ones and some awful ones. However, there is a level of accountability present in the charter school movement that is intensifying and that is different than many long-standing traditional schools. Because these schools are autonomous they can do what is best for their students without being beholden to the demands of a district that makes decisions from afar for several hundred thousand students at a time. That is huge. </p>
<p>My daughter currently teaches at one of the top-performing charter schools in our vast urban city. She worked for one year in a traditional public school and has now been in a charter for two years. The difference, on many levels, is staggering. The vast majority of the students graduating from this charter’s high school (she is in middle school) are going off to college, which cannot be said for the local traditional schools. Charter schools do not cherry-pick their students and the Superman movie will be helpful in dispelling that myth. Most days my daughter is running after school tutoring sessions which students who are not performing well are required to attend. I have seen her whip out her cell phone and call a parent and say (usually in Spanish), “Your child needs to stay for tutoring today.” Her students have her cell phone number and text or call her if they are stumped on homework and she responds. The days are very long for teachers, the school year is longer than traditional schools and there is a relentless, exhausting culture of achievement that is constantly promoted because these kids have a lot of catching up to do and a lot of strikes against them.</p>
<p>Recently, our school district made the bold decision to let someone else, whether it was charter schools or teachers, etc., to take over some of the poorest performing schools in the city. I went to a town hall meeting and I will not forget one woman who stood up and said that out here, in our more suburban part of the city, parents had choices. The magnet programs were strong, there were some schools with open enrollment, there were a few options. She then went on to say that were her nieces and nephews live, in the same school district, there is no choice at all without charter schools and that every person who is opposed to the charter school movement should think about what it would be like to have virtually no choice but a local school where you fear for your child’s safety and where the drop-out rate is sky-high. Choice is important and there are many places where charter schools are the only choice besides the school down the street which may or may not be awful. Competition is good in every field and education is no exception.</p>
<p>I read that the director? writer? wanted to use the lottery metaphor, and that drove the selection of the schools. He wanted to use a Los Angeles magnet (Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, aka LACES), but couldn’t get permission to film.</p>
<p>Wish for some states we could turn back the clock to the pre “No Child Left Behind” era rules. One size certainly does not fit all. It is scary to hear how teachers are rewarded or punished for how their students do when so many variables are not accounted for. The best students can’t improve beyond the ceilings imposed so their teachers lose points on percentage improved. States who were ahead lose out in the race to mediocrity. Areas with many superb private choices don’t get their best parents fighting for the public schools. And so forth.</p>
<p>This is one movie I don’t plan to see. It would be frustrating to watch and feel helpless to change things. Things seem to work locally- have seen improvements over the years of son in the system. District has adapted to the changing school population as well as getting the GT program going as it should. State expanding, not shrinking, classes at flagship U. Somehow not as envious of those in more popular areas as I would have been without the bad news.</p>
Unfortunately, most parents aren’t like us.</p>