Anthony, featured in Waiting for Superman, who wins a lottery and gets to go
to a DC charter boarding school

Charter schools again offered as the cure for America's bad educational system

Davis Guggenheim's documentary Waiting for Superman goes over much the same ground as Madeline Sackler's recently released The Lottery. Both depict the sadly declined state of American public school education. Both end with four young students, some joyous and some heartbroken, who submit to a lottery to get into an outstanding charter school (or in one case, just a school without tracking, with the same effect of a good charter school of giving every student a crack at going to college).

Why the two films about the same subject? Well, obviously because it is an urgent one. American students have fallen so far behind the rest of the developed world in mathematical and verbal performance that the country will be doomed to mediocrity -- and to recruiting a large percentage of its professionals from abroad -- if this problem is not soon remedied. These two films still leave a need for other films that debate the issues more forcefully, more broadly, with more voices heard. Ending with school admission lotteries as these two films do may provide a final emotional punch but still seems more a distraction than a conclusion. The implication that somehow charter schools are the solution to America's vast social and cultural problems is rather absurd.

Guggenheim's treatment of the crisis, which he narrates in the first person, is, as predicted, angrier and wider in scope than The Lottery. He refers more often to the nation as a whole. He points out how local autonomy undermines national efforts at reform of education. He discusses the prevailing weaknesses of suburban white schools as well as those of urban poor black and Latino ones. Each of his four lottery participants is trying to get into a different school, in a different part of the country; besides the non-tracking public school in Woodside, California, another is a boarding school. Sackler's kids are all trying to get into one of Guggenheim's four, the Harlem Success Academy. Overall, Guggenheim's film provides a more forceful and comprehensive discussion of the issues. It's also got Bill Gates behind it and in it.

Superman points out that while schools have remained, the country has changed. The tracking system once worked, Guggenheim says, by sending some students to college, others to technical schools, others to agriculture. Now, he says, our society and job situation is different and you are screwed if you don't go to college. There are not decent work opportunities for people without college degrees. Therefore, he says, putting students in separate tracks in high school is now wrong.

Superman goes into the way high schools, especially in urban ghettos, are failure factories. Guggenheim points to a new belief that it's not the community that makes the schools lousy, but the lousy schools that have been ruining communities. This is a revolutionary new idea: is it true? Are the schools to blame, or some schools anyway, particularly public high schools? Not the neighborhood, not the crime, the poverty, the parents in jail or out of work?. This is surely debatable, and an oversimplification. But the point is well taken. Schools actually matter -- and can do tremendous harm. And Superman , like The Lottery, makes clear that poor, disadvantaged urban youths can be turned into good students if provided with schools that follow them with a vengeance, believe in them, encourage them, give them extra help, and demand excellence. Guggenheim gives much face time to social activist and Harlem Children's Zone director Geoffrey Canada (also heard from in The Lottery), whose aim has been to develop superior charter schools and increase high school and college graduation rates among students in Harlem.

Superman is eye-opening on some points and its anger makes one think. Curiously, though, it is not quite the film it could have been, giving its provocative material. It drags a bit, does not get as close to its students or its schools, and lacks the forward momentum of The Lottery, which has a strong start by focusing on the Harlem Success Academy, spotlighting its committed, passionate principal, Eva Moskowitz, and showing the school's teachers and classes and hot local community issues. Those who want to know the subject well should also see The Lottery. But Waiting for Superman is the film that is going to have more impact. President Obama has already endorsed it. Guggenheim's film has a chance of leading a national debate about American public education. But Waiting for Superman has too many jittery animations, too many pointless archival clips of fossilized Fifties teachers. Guggenheim's narration is feeble and weekly voiced. And after all his attempt at a wider scope, he winds up with the same conclusion as Sackler's, which is a livelier and better photographed film (by crack d.p. Wolfgang Held).

Both films point to what the filmmakers, viewing the world from the point of view of the charter school organizers, regard as the major obstacle to improving US schools -- a national teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), that protects bad teachers. It indeed seems likely that one source of educational decline is that over time the AFT has grown more excessively protective of all its members, regardless of merit. Superman puts greater emphasis on this, to the extent that the AFT is howling with protest. In Waiting for Superman we hear from AFT head Randi Weingarten, but she is overruled by the film, and by Newsweesenior editor Jonathan Alter. We are told teachers get tenure after two years -- a process that's long and hard in colleges -- and can't be extricated once they've got it no matter how lazy or incompetent they are. We learn that young, dynamic D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee made dramatic changes that had an effect, but then hit a wall when she came against the teachers union. Sackler's film also asserted that union rules forbidding longer class hours hamstring the system. Both films say charter schools triumph because they can fire teachers and increase hours, let teachers spend more time preparing, and add summer classes.

Needless to say the AFT doesn't like these films. They point out that there are good public school teachers (indeed nobody in either films says there aren't; they just don't talk about them). The AFT insists there are bad charter schools, more than good ones. And this is true, but not mentioned in either film. As for the AFT's self-defense, however, what is their explanation of the drop in performance of US students compared to the rest of the developed world? Well, bad teachers can't be the only reason. Lack of national organization is a factor. These films focus on parents and children who want to get into outstanding schools. But what about the parents who don't care? Who are drug addicts or in jail? Charter schools are not the answer. Some high schools may be failure factories, but they exist in neighborhoods with a myriad of other problems.

As I said in writing about The Lottery, "the opponents of charter schools are right, because there are not enough of them. . . What is so great about charter schools if everyone deserves to go to them, and anyone can benefit from them, but only a few can go? It's not democratic. All the schools should be charter schools, or none." Waiting for Superman, like The Lottery, is a good film for stimulating debate, but it oversimplifies the issues. But I am willing to say that if the outstanding charter schools, of which there clearly are some, can sufficiently proliferate, they might help make a point. That's that with hand-picked teachers, a dedication to excellence, and motivated parents and students, maybe communities can be turned around. It's a nice idea. But a few public schools run like elite private schools cannot reform a national educational system. The idea that you can resolve a public problem by going private is regressive. This is why conservatives are praising the film.

Davis Guggenheim has directed a lot of TV (Melrose Place, Deadwood, NYPD Blue) and the good music doc It Might Get Loud, and is married to Leaving Las Vegas actress Elizabeth Shue. He made a 1999 education film, The First Year, which he refers to in Superman, about five beginning teachers in the L.A. public school system. He begins Superman by the admission that despite his admiration for these teachers, when it came time to send his own kids to school, he sent them to private ones.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.