Waiting for an authentic answer: a reflection on the film Waiting for Superman
The film manages to successfully show some of the economical problems of our education system and bring into perspective our costly system and the flaws that it carries when compared to the rest of the world. It shows the sad reality of tenure in education and how it has come to affect the ability of school administrators and policy makers to rid bad teachers from the system. However, it fails to show tenure as a system that protects good teachers from bad situations, but portrays it as a policy that is institutionalized and protected by the “big union bosses”. While it is true that the process of tenure is often abused and protects ineffective teachers from due process, the film in a way demonizes tenure in a pretty clear way. As a solution, the director seems to push for Michelle Rhee’s agenda of eliminating tenure and offering better pay to teachers who perform well. The director does not show evidence to support how this would make education better, the film makes the assumption that this would encourage teachers to work harder and it would reward those that are already performing well. This of course assumes as well that teachers perform well because of their work, and not because of the quality of students that the educators teach to. Guggenheim therefore goes on to track on the premise that teachers alone are solely responsible for students’ performance and scores, when in fact about 60 percent of student’s achievements are explained by non-school factors (Ravitch, 2010). The film completely underestimates the issues that significantly affect the health and learning opportunities of children in poor communities, and that limit what schools can accomplish in such communities (Berliner, 2009). Common problems such as Low birth weight, non-generically influences on children, inadequate dental, medical and vision care, food insecurity, environmental pollutants, family relations and even neighborhood characteristics are simply disregarded in the film. Instead, we are convinced that any human is capable of achieving the impossible, by using metaphors through Charles Yeager’s U.S. air Force accomplishment of breaking “the impossible” by breaking the sound barrier. While the story is inspiring and admirable, it does not offer a concrete and or methodical way to encourages students about the value of education. While it may inspire a few people on a personal level, there are far too many problems and issues with students of low-income families to even consider thinking about reaching "The impossible" (this is not to say that such students do not want to or can reach success). Therefore, from such perspective, Guggenheim’s premise seems counter intuitive to what most research suggests: that poverty (which includes having insurance), childhood illness and injury do affect school performance (Berliner, 2009). The film also takes the complete assumption that teachers in poverty stricken areas are to solely assume blame for school failures and that poverty alone is not a problem to be concerned about (Dutro, 2011).
Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman does not include one successful public school, public school teacher or even an administrator. It fails to pinpoint the number of failing charter schools and does not include any teachers of administrators from any failing charter. It also fails to explain that the CREDO studies have previously shown that only 17 percent of charter schools were superior to a matched traditional public school; 37 percent were worse than public schools; and the remaining 46 percent had academic gains no different from that of a similar public school (Ravitch, 2010). The documentary only focuses on an elite number of charter schools to establish its premise that charters are better than public school. Of course, this follows the argument that almost all public schools in the United States are falling our students or that they are in the edge of doing so. With that said, the focus on charter schools is blinded by the fact that they receive students from families that show a lot of interest and dedication, and that they must compete to enter into these school. It therefore is quite rational to deduce that such families are going to value an opportunity to be in such a school, therefore putting pressure on the students to perform. Nothing is said about the fact that these charter schools have the absolute right to kick out any student who does not perform well (something a public school can not legally ever do). Something not mentioned on the film was how charters are funded. As an example, one of the charter schools presented, The Harlem Children’s Zone, received up to 100 million dollars in funding from private sources, including the Bill Gates foundation (Dutro, 2011). Therefore, all the charter schools presented were and are are not only well funded; are occupied of students who have families that support them; the schools have the right to choose and keep and kick out students registered though the “lottery”; but also these schools are capable of maintaining en environment and staff that are well encouraged to work with students who go to school with a positive attitude. How is this not a recipe for success? We may ask. However, the reality of turning our countrywide school system into anything that resembles the successful charter school system is unreal and unsustainable, especially when we take into consideration the vast amount of problems and needs that children in urban, low income communities, face continuously.
The film Waiting for Superman, makes many claims about the state of the U.S. education which are true and which certainly alarm people who are not aware that we face a major problem in rapid moving world of global competition. While it is true that we are lagging behind other nations, and that the United States is failing to address the issue in a comprehensible and systematic way, the film presents a number of answer or conclusions that are irrelevant, inconsistent and unrealistic. The film is based on a number of premises that are assumed, unsupported by research, and fail to give a reasonable solution to helping students who come from poor neighborhoods and who face real day to day economical, psychological and even family issues. The film instead relies on supporting the idea that by getting rid of the tenure process, firing the bottom 5-10 percent of ineffective teachers, opening up charter schools that use a private school model, and paying high achieving teachers more money will fix our school system. While it is clear that the documentary alters viewer emotions by presenting real life people whose lives are devoted to give their children a better future, it fails to give a real world and holistic solution to the many problems that we face today. It is therefore reasonable to say that the film is biased for the privatization of schools, and will fire up support from those individuals who believe that public school should be run and saved through a capitalistic, “corporate America” style that will keep it free from the monstrous Unions that are responsible for the failure of our children.
Works Cited
Berliner,
D. (2009). Policy and potential: Out-of-school factors and school
success. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center
& Education
Policy Research Unit. Retrieved September 28, 2014
from
http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/poverty-and-potential.
Dutro, E. (2011) Review of waiting for superman. National education policy center. University of Colorado. Retrieved September 28, 2014
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-waiting-superman
Guggenheim, D., Kimball, B., Chilcott, L., Strickland, B., Canada, G., Rhee, M., Weingarten, R., ... Paramount Home Entertainment (Firm). (2011). Waiting
for "Superman". Hollywood, Calif: Paramount Home Entertainment.
Ravitch, D. (2010). The Myth of Charter Schools. The New York Review of Books. Retrieved September 28, 2014
http://216.78.200.159/RandD/Charter%20Schools/NAEP%20Flaws/Myth%20of%20Charter%20Schools%20-%20Ravitch.pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment