Which brings us to Geoffrey Canada, a brilliant and charismatic community organizer, but an odd choice to emerge as the voice of Superman. His groundbreaking Harlem Children’s Zone looks more like Finland than the new education reformers seem to recognize. In his book Whatever It Takes, Paul Tough describes the remarkable (and for the most part, privately funded) conveyor belt of social services Canada has created in a 97-square-block area in Harlem. The Children’s Zone provides prenatal training for parents, health care, and college prep programs—services many believe schools should not need to succeed.
By now, chinks have begun to show in the charter-school movement. Measuring the depth of a child’s education turns out to be complex and elusive. Recent reports show that even Geoffrey Canada’s schools slipped in standardized test rankings last year, along with those in other city charters.
Meanwhile, the media’s coverage of education issues remains less than inspiring. In a Wall Street Journal article, Rupert Murdoch actually suggested that we might turn to American Idol for inspiration. It has higher performance standards for pop stars, he said, than educators do for public-school children.
To be honest, nobody has zeroed in more sharply on the emptiness of such coverage than comedian Lewis Black on The Daily Show. “Ah, fall,” he intoned in a recent segment. “That magical time when we spend one or two weeks pretending we’re actually going to do something about the condition of our schools.” He then cut to a clip of David Gregory, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, providing his own DIY recipe for school reform: “If you drive by a public school, even if your kids don’t go there, walk in, and ask what you can do to help.”
It’s enough to make me cry.
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Thank you. Very humourously written.
#1 Posted by Alexis , CJR on Wed 27 Oct 2010 at 11:59 PM
My post refuting the false story about one of the schools in the movie is portrayed is up on Washington Post education writer Valerie Strauss' blog today. Or to be accurate, I'M not the one who refutes the false story -- the student pictured in the movie is the one who refutes the false story.
"Superman' tells false story about Emily's school
This was written by Caroline Grannan, a San Francisco public school parent, volunteer, advocate and blogger.
By Caroline Grannan
“Woodside is a great school." -- Emily Jones
The movie “Waiting for Superman” tells the stories of five students around the country who are desperate to escape their “failing” public schools and get into the shining charters that are portrayed as their only chance of success – or at least that’s the tale the movie tells.
One of those stories takes place in my neck of the woods, here in the San Francisco Bay Area. The one white middle-class student among the five kids in the movie is Emily Jones, who lives on the suburban San Francisco Peninsula.
The story that Waiting for Superman tells is that Emily is desperate to escape her district public high school, Woodside High, because she’s a bright student who “doesn’t test well,” and due to Woodside’s antiquated and harmful tracking policies, she’ll be tracked into lower-level classes that will doom her to mediocrity.
She grasps at (as the movie shows it) her only hope – Summit Prep Charter, which does the opposite of tracking, requiring all its students to take six AP courses during high school.
Well, that story is false. Here’s the proof. On this video clip, John Fensterwald of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation interviews Emily.
The part in the movie illustrating how the horror of tracking sent her fleeing to Summit Prep features a graphic showing students on a conveyor belt, with the select few being elevated to higher-level classes and the rest being dropped onto a march to oblivion.
Yet in the video interview, Emily chats freely with John for five minutes and mentions a number of reasons for wanting to go to Summit instead of Woodside – but never mentions or even alludes to tracking. Just after minute five, Fensterwald brings up tracking. Emily comments on tracking only after Fensterwald prompts her.
And in fact, here’s what Emily says about Woodside High: “Woodside is a great school. I really liked it and I really wanted to go there before I saw Summit.”
That’s not what Waiting for Superman portrays. If the movie misled viewers with a false story about Emily, the line “fool me twice, shame on me” applies – we can’t believe anything it shows us.
Meanwhile, parents at Woodside High have created a huge banner and posted it across the front of the school:
“Woodside High School teachers – Man, You’re Super! Thank you for teaching ALL the students in our community!”
#2 Posted by Caroline Grannan, CJR on Thu 28 Oct 2010 at 11:47 AM
Have not seen this movie but have heard its criticisms. Did not know about the High School II film so I will keep that in mind. Have many thoughts on this topic but will just say that the emphasis on firing teachers is corrosive. Even if Supermen teachers were not mythical, how does a culture which places bulls eyes on teachers actually expect the Supermen to apply for those jobs? It's dispiriting, even if it is a relief to know that terrible teachers have been relieved of their duties. Another example of a well-done approach to educating children who are up against it can be found in the PBS series E2 where they profiled the green-building techniques of a green-energy school in the Himalayas, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Druk_White_Lotus_School. The film focuses on architecture but the school's educational philosophies come through as very inspiring. If every struggling American school was infused with that kind of care and attention to the full environment for its students, the outcomes would have to turn out better than from mass firings of teachers. Is it true that students in Finland don't wear shoes in class? If so, such a small detail but it says much about the cleanliness and safety and respect in their classrooms. Will have to learn more about Finland.
#3 Posted by MB, CJR on Thu 28 Oct 2010 at 04:26 PM
I thought the film was fine in its basic points, and was average for a documentary in getting facts right in a brief summation of a very complex issue. KIPP and other programs have provided experiments, and some work. Those that work should be emulated. That's the basic point of the movie, and I agree.
My kids went through a good public school, but even there the teacher who hit an humiliated students couldn't be fired, just posted to admin duty. My daughter taught at an inner-city high school on the east coast. The principle there refused to institute consistent discipline programs that the teachers advocated, and the school degenerated into chaos until the city took over. That principle should be gone, but isn't. The point the film makes about having some accountability for the quality of work is important, and missing in most of public education. The fact that there are good teachers too doesn't change that.
The film's narrative is very reasonable, even there are counterpoints or points twisted. It's pretty good for a documentary, even if not up to the CJR standards.
#4 Posted by Keith, CJR on Thu 28 Oct 2010 at 05:01 PM
LynNell Hancock's excellent analysis of this unbelievably overrated documentary should have noted the devestating criticism of the film by Diane Ravitch, the formerly conservative education specialist in the Bush administration, in the New York Review of Books issue dated November 11, 2010, which probably also can be found online.
#5 Posted by Paul D, CJR on Thu 28 Oct 2010 at 10:18 PM
LynNell Hancock's excellent analysis of this unbelievably overrated documentary should have noted the devestating criticism of the film by Diane Ravitch, the formerly conservative education specialist in the Bush administration, in the New York Review of Books issue dated November 11, 2010, which probably also can be found online.
#6 Posted by Paul D, CJR on Thu 28 Oct 2010 at 10:22 PM
"Where to direct all that righteous anger? Is Guggenheim pressing for a thoughtful dialogue and real transformation, or a self-destructive rush to the barricades? And why are most journalists not asking these questions? Stripped to its essence, the film’s solutions are seductively simple. Officials should fire bad teachers, close down failing public schools, and replace them with charters—schools funded with public dollars and run by private boards."
Funny, it's your take on the movie that is seductively oversimplified. The film showed that attempting to reform the education system is an arduous, complicated task that is nearly impossible to achieve. No simple solutions were cited.
The director did not suggest opening charter schools was the ultimate answer to the problem of our dwindling public education system. Quite clearly, the film cites the teachers unions as the main obstacle to better public education in the United States. At the very beginning of the film, the unions' record campaign contributions are cited, and the unions are shown obstructing progress throughout the film - every step of the way. Charter schools are a mere band aid solution. Even the reformer who started KIPP made it clear that he created this school system because he couldn't reform the public school system. The film suggests that as long as bureaucracy (and self-serving teachers unions) stop real reform, charter schools are the best viable option at the moment. That does not mean that they are the best option, nor a simple solution.
Perhaps you should watch the movie again and allow your anger to be rightfully directed towards the teachers unions - AFT and NEA - which are protecting bad educators (to keep up their membership numbers) while blocking legislation that will compensate excellent teachers properly and improve the education system. It is RIDICULOUS that teachers get an automatic tenure after two years. These unions are protecting that law for their own self-interest - not for the children, and not for the good teachers. Until this law changes, our education system will forever lag behind those of our first world peers, plain and simple.
"In Superman, instead, troops are rallied for a partisan battle. On one side are the self-described rebels, the good reformers, storming the gates of the status quo; on the other side, anyone who disagrees. "
Again a major oversimplification. Shame on you, Columbia journalism. This is not deep thinking here.
#7 Posted by Kate F, CJR on Fri 29 Oct 2010 at 05:21 PM
Actually, anyone who walked in without much prior knowledge would absolutely interpret Waiting for Superman as presenting charter schools and the ability to fire "bad teachers" as the E-Z miracle solution.Unfortunately, a large number of our nation's editorial boards see it that way too, and their attitude seems to be "we've made up our minds and we don't want to hear any facts or arguments that challenge our decisions."
But in reality: As Diane Ravitch and other well-informed education insiders point out, the states that don't allow union protection -- and thus where teachers CAN be fired at will -- tend to be the states with the lowest academic achievement. That blows Guggenheim's whole simplistic, false and malicious message right out of the water.
Regarding the success of KIPP and similar charters -- the press needs to look at the attrition and the selectivity before hailing them. The New York Times did report that the SEED School (shown in the movie) has been kicking out 70 percent of its students between enrollment and graduation, and doesn't replace them (the school says it's trying to reduce the number of expulsions). KIPP schools, when scrutinized, have an eye-popping attrition rate, and unlike public schools, they do not replace the students who leave. The Los Angeles KIPP school shown in Waiting for Superman has more than 50% of its students leave between 6th and 8th grades, and doesn't replace them. If a public school could get rid of more than half of its most challenging students, wouldn't it do really well too?
#8 Posted by CarolineSF, CJR on Tue 2 Nov 2010 at 09:37 AM
Teacher's unions are only put into place so teachers cannot be wrongfully terminated. This means that teachers are given a due process. It is absolutely possible to get a bad teacher fired but often, the administrators fail to want to create the paper trail needed to fire these teachers.
Rather than pointing fingers at teachers, and unions and Gugenheim, we should be asking, "What is the solution?" We need to find a solution to help our students succeed based on the limited and small budgets we have. If teachers aren't going to get more pay and still have to put in long hours, how can we keep them happy and wanting to come back for more? We need solutions, not finger pointing.
#9 Posted by StephanieC, CJR on Mon 15 Nov 2010 at 12:07 PM