This was the first article I ever published in The New York Review of Books, which is far and away the best literary-political journal in the United States, and among the best in the world. It has a very large readership. My ability to publish there has allowed me to reach outside the world of education to a much broader public. Since this article appeared in 2010, I have written many essay-reviews for the NYRB. I saw a preview of the film, along with other reviewers, and took note. [The most dramatic moment at the preview was when Barbara Walters tripped on the carpeted stairs in the darkened theater, and the only person who jumped up to help her was my partner].
I was appalled by the film’s deceptive use of NAEP data, intended to create a fake narrative of a “crisis” in public education that reached every corner of the nation and discredited almost every public school. It portrayed charter schools as some sort of miraculous institution that could take children from any background and turn them into scholars. Any contact with the real world of education suggests that this is a fantasy, beloved by Hollywood, but a fantasy nonetheless. Not long after the review appeared, I got a google alert telling me that the review was cited by the “Hollywood Reporter,” a trade journal. It said that the movie was very unlikely to get a nomination for an Academy Award because of the facts revealed in this review. I thought it was a meretricious film, pure propaganda for privatization.
Here goes.
Ordinarily, documentaries about education attract little attention, and seldom, if ever, reach neighborhood movie theaters. Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for “Superman” is different. It arrived in late September with the biggest publicity splash I have ever seen for a documentary. Not only was it the subject of major stories in Time and New York, but it was featured twice on The Oprah Winfrey Show and was the centerpiece of several days of programming by NBC, including an interview with President Obama.
Two other films expounding the same arguments—The Lottery and The Cartel—were released in the late spring, but they received far less attention than Guggenheim’s film. His reputation as the director of the Academy Award–winning An Inconvenient Truth, about global warming, contributed to the anticipation surrounding Waiting for “Superman,” but the media frenzy suggested something more. Guggenheim presents the popularized version of an account of American public education that is promoted by some of the nation’s most powerful figures and institutions.
The message of these films has become alarmingly familiar: American public education is a failed enterprise. The problem is not money. Public schools already spend too much. Test scores are low because there are so many bad teachers, whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. Students drop out because the schools fail them, but they could accomplish practically anything if they were saved from bad teachers. They would get higher test scores if schools could fire more bad teachers and pay more to good ones. The only hope for the future of our society, especially for poor black and Hispanic children, is escape from public schools, especially to charter schools, which are mostly funded by the government but controlled by private organizations, many of them operating to make a profit.
The Cartel maintains that we must not only create more charter schools, but provide vouchers so that children can flee incompetent public schools and attend private schools. There, we are led to believe, teachers will be caring and highly skilled (unlike the lazy dullards in public schools); the schools will have high expectations and test scores will soar; and all children will succeed academically, regardless of their circumstances. The Lottery echoes the main story line of Waiting for “Superman”: it is about children who are desperate to avoid the New York City public schools and eager to win a spot in a shiny new charter school in Harlem.
For many people, these arguments require a willing suspension of disbelief. Most Americans graduated from public schools, and most went from school to college or the workplace without thinking that their school had limited their life chances. There was a time—which now seems distant—when most people assumed that students’ performance in school was largely determined by their own efforts and by the circumstances and support of their family, not by their teachers. There were good teachers and mediocre teachers, even bad teachers, but in the end, most public schools offered ample opportunity for education to those willing to pursue it. The annual Gallup poll about education shows that Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the quality of the nation’s schools, but 77 percent of public school parents award their own child’s public school a grade of A or B, the highest level of approval since the question was first asked in 1985.
Waiting for “Superman” and the other films appeal to a broad apprehension that the nation is falling behind in global competition. If the economy is a shambles, if poverty persists for significant segments of the population, if American kids are not as serious about their studies as their peers in other nations, the schools must be to blame. At last we have the culprit on which we can pin our anger, our palpable sense that something is very wrong with our society, that we are on the wrong track, and that America is losing the race for global dominance. It is not globalization or deindustrialization or poverty or our coarse popular culture or predatory financial practices that bear responsibility: it’s the public schools, their teachers, and their unions.
The inspiration for Waiting for “Superman” began, Guggenheim explains, as he drove his own children to a private school, past the neighborhood schools with low test scores. He wondered about the fate of the children whose families did not have the choice of schools available to his own children. What was the quality of their education? He was sure it must be terrible. The press release for the film says that he wondered, “How heartsick and worried did their parents feel as they dropped their kids off this morning?” Guggenheim is a graduate of Sidwell Friends, the elite private school in Washington, D.C., where President Obama’s daughters are enrolled. The public schools that he passed by each morning must have seemed as hopeless and dreadful to him as the public schools in Washington that his own parents had shunned.
Waiting for “Superman” tells the story of five children who enter a lottery to win a coveted place in a charter school. Four of them seek to escape the public schools; one was asked to leave a Catholic school because her mother couldn’t afford the tuition. Four of the children are black or Hispanic and live in gritty neighborhoods, while the one white child lives in a leafy suburb. We come to know each of these children and their families; we learn about their dreams for the future; we see that they are lovable; and we identify with them. By the end of the film, we are rooting for them as the day of the lottery approaches.
In each of the schools to which they have applied, the odds against them are large. Anthony, a fifth-grader in Washington, D.C., applies to the SEED charter boarding school, where there are sixty-one applicants for twenty-four places. Francisco is a first-grade student in the Bronx whose mother (a social worker with a graduate degree) is desperate to get him out of the New York City public schools and into a charter school; she applies to Harlem Success Academy where he is one of 792 applicants for forty places. Bianca is the kindergarten student in Harlem whose mother cannot afford Catholic school tuition; she enters the lottery at another Harlem Success Academy, as one of 767 students competing for thirty-five openings. Daisy is a fifth-grade student in East Los Angeles whose parents hope she can win a spot at KIPP LA PREP, where 135 students have applied for ten places. Emily is an eighth-grade student in Silicon Valley, where the local high school has gorgeous facilities, high graduation rates, and impressive test scores, but her family worries that she will be assigned to a slow track because of her low test scores; so they enter the lottery for Summit Preparatory Charter High School, where she is one of 455 students competing for 110 places.
The stars of the film are Geoffrey Canada, the CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, which provides a broad variety of social services to families and children and runs two charter schools; Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public school system, who closed schools, fired teachers and principals, and gained a national reputation for her tough policies; David Levin and Michael Feinberg, who have built a network of nearly one hundred high-performing KIPP charter schools over the past sixteen years; and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who is cast in the role of chief villain. Other charter school leaders, like Steve Barr of the Green Dot chain in Los Angeles, do star turns, as does Bill Gates of Microsoft, whose foundation has invested many millions of dollars in expanding the number of charter schools. No successful public school teacher or principal or superintendent appears in the film; indeed there is no mention of any successful public school, only the incessant drumbeat on the theme of public school failure.
The situation is dire, the film warns us. We must act. But what must we do? The message of the film is clear. Public schools are bad, privately managed charter schools are good. Parents clamor to get their children out of the public schools in New York City (despite the claims by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that the city’s schools are better than ever) and into the charters (the mayor also plans to double the number of charters, to help more families escape from the public schools that he controls). If we could fire the bottom 5 to 10 percent of the lowest-performing teachers every year, says Hoover Institution economist Eric Hanushek in the film, our national test scores would soon approach the top of international rankings in mathematics and science.
Some fact-checking is in order, and the place to start is with the film’s quiet acknowledgment that only one in five charter schools is able to get the “amazing results” that it celebrates. Nothing more is said about this astonishing statistic. It is drawn from a national study of charter schools by Stanford economist Margaret Raymond (the wife of Hanushek). Known as the CREDO study, it evaluated student progress on math tests in half the nation’s five thousand charter schools and concluded that 17 percent were superior to a matched traditional public school; 37 percent were worse than the public school; and the remaining 46 percent had academic gains no different from that of a similar public school. The proportion of charters that get amazing results is far smaller than 17 percent.Why did Davis Guggenheim pay no attention to the charter schools that are run by incompetent leaders or corporations mainly concerned to make money? Why propound to an unknowing public the myth that charter schools are the answer to our educational woes, when the filmmaker knows that there are twice as many failing charters as there are successful ones? Why not give an honest accounting?
The propagandistic nature of Waiting for “Superman” is revealed by Guggenheim’s complete indifference to the wide variation among charter schools. There are excellent charter schools, just as there are excellent public schools. Why did he not also inquire into the charter chains that are mired in unsavory real estate deals, or take his camera to the charters where most students are getting lower scores than those in the neighborhood public schools? Why did he not report on the charter principals who have been indicted for embezzlement, or the charters that blur the line between church and state? Why did he not look into the charter schools whose leaders are paid $300,000–$400,000 a year to oversee small numbers of schools and students?
Guggenheim seems to believe that teachers alone can overcome the effects of student poverty, even though there are countless studies that demonstrate the link between income and test scores. He shows us footage of the pilot Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier, to the amazement of people who said it couldn’t be done. Since Yeager broke the sound barrier, we should be prepared to believe that able teachers are all it takes to overcome the disadvantages of poverty, homelessness, joblessness, poor nutrition, absent parents, etc.
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Paramount Pictures
Francisco, a first-grade student in the Bronx whose mother wants him to attend a charter school
The movie asserts a central thesis in today’s school reform discussion: the idea that teachers are the most important factor determining student achievement. But this proposition is false. Hanushek has released studies showing that teacher quality accounts for about 7.5–10 percent of student test score gains. Several other high-quality analyses echo this finding, and while estimates vary a bit, there is a relative consensus: teachers statistically account for around 10–20 percent of achievement outcomes. Teachers are the most important factor within schools.
But the same body of research shows that nonschool factors matter even more than teachers. According to University of Washington economist Dan Goldhaber, about 60 percent of achievement is explained by nonschool factors, such as family income. So while teachers are the most important factor within schools, their effects pale in comparison with those of students’ backgrounds, families, and other factors beyond the control of schools and teachers. Teachers can have a profound effect on students, but it would be foolish to believe that teachers alone can undo the damage caused by poverty and its associated burdens.
Guggenheim skirts the issue of poverty by showing only families that are intact and dedicated to helping their children succeed. One of the children he follows is raised by a doting grandmother; two have single mothers who are relentless in seeking better education for them; two of them live with a mother and father. Nothing is said about children whose families are not available, for whatever reason, to support them, or about children who are homeless, or children with special needs. Nor is there any reference to the many charter schools that enroll disproportionately small numbers of children who are English-language learners or have disabilities.
The film never acknowledges that charter schools were created mainly at the instigation of Albert Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers from 1974 to 1997. Shanker had the idea in 1988 that a group of public school teachers would ask their colleagues for permission to create a small school that would focus on the neediest students, those who had dropped out and those who were disengaged from school and likely to drop out. He sold the idea as a way to open schools that would collaborate with public schools and help motivate disengaged students. In 1993, Shanker turned against the charter school idea when he realized that for-profit organizations saw it as a business opportunity and were advancing an agenda of school privatization. Michelle Rhee gained her teaching experience in Baltimore as an employee of Education Alternatives, Inc., one of the first of the for-profit operations.
Today, charter schools are promoted not as ways to collaborate with public schools but as competitors that will force them to get better or go out of business. In fact, they have become the force for privatization that Shanker feared. Because of the high-stakes testing regime created by President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, charter schools compete to get higher test scores than regular public schools and thus have an incentive to avoid students who might pull down their scores. Under NCLB, low-performing schools may be closed, while high-performing ones may get bonuses. Some charter schools “counsel out” or expel students just before state testing day. Some have high attrition rates, especially among lower-performing students.
Perhaps the greatest distortion in this film is its misrepresentation of data about student academic performance. The film claims that 70 percent of eighth-grade students cannot read at grade level. This is flatly wrong. Guggenheim here relies on numbers drawn from the federally sponsored National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). I served as a member of the governing board for the national tests for seven years, and I know how misleading Guggenheim’s figures are. NAEP doesn’t measure performance in terms of grade-level achievement. The highest level of performance, “advanced,” is equivalent to an A+, representing the highest possible academic performance. The next level, “proficient,” is equivalent to an A or a very strong B. The next level is “basic,” which probably translates into a C grade. The film assumes that any student below proficient is “below grade level.” But it would be far more fitting to worry about students who are “below basic,” who are 25 percent of the national sample, not 70 percent.
Guggenheim didn’t bother to take a close look at the heroes of his documentary. Geoffrey Canada is justly celebrated for the creation of the Harlem Children’s Zone, which not only runs two charter schools but surrounds children and their families with a broad array of social and medical services. Canada has a board of wealthy philanthropists and a very successful fund-raising apparatus. With assets of more than $200 million, his organization has no shortage of funds. Canada himself is currently paid $400,000 annually. For Guggenheim to praise Canada while also claiming that public schools don’t need any more money is bizarre. Canada’s charter schools get better results than nearby public schools serving impoverished students. If all inner-city schools had the same resources as his, they might get the same good results.
But contrary to the myth that Guggenheim propounds about “amazing results,” even Geoffrey Canada’s schools have many students who are not proficient. On the 2010 state tests, 60 percent of the fourth-grade students in one of his charter schools were not proficient in reading, nor were 50 percent in the other. It should be noted—and Guggenheim didn’t note it—that Canada kicked out his entire first class of middle school students when they didn’t get good enough test scores to satisfy his board of trustees. This sad event was documented by Paul Tough in his laudatory account of Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, Whatever It Takes (2009). Contrary to Guggenheim’s mythology, even the best-funded charters, with the finest services, can’t completely negate the effects of poverty.
Guggenheim ignored other clues that might have gotten in the way of a good story. While blasting the teachers’ unions, he points to Finland as a nation whose educational system the US should emulate, not bothering to explain that it has a completely unionized teaching force. His documentary showers praise on testing and accountability, yet he does not acknowledge that Finland seldom tests its students. Any Finnish educator will say that Finland improved its public education system not by privatizing its schools or constantly testing its students, but by investing in the preparation, support, and retention of excellent teachers. It achieved its present eminence not by systematically firing 5–10 percent of its teachers, but by patiently building for the future. Finland has a national curriculum, which is not restricted to the basic skills of reading and math, but includes the arts, sciences, history, foreign languages, and other subjects that are essential to a good, rounded education. Finland also strengthened its social welfare programs for children and families. Guggenheim simply ignores the realities of the Finnish system.
In any school reform proposal, the question of “scalability” always arises. Can reforms be reproduced on a broad scale? The fact that one school produces amazing results is not in itself a demonstration that every other school can do the same. For example, Guggenheim holds up Locke High School in Los Angeles, part of the Green Dot charter chain, as a success story but does not tell the whole story. With an infusion of $15 million of mostly private funding, Green Dot produced a safer, cleaner campus, but no more than tiny improvements in its students’ abysmal test scores. According to the Los Angeles Times, the percentage of its students proficient in English rose from 13.7 percent in 2009 to 14.9 percent in 2010, while in math the proportion of proficient students grew from 4 percent to 6.7 percent. What can be learned from this small progress? Becoming a charter is no guarantee that a school serving a tough neighborhood will produce educational miracles.
Another highly praised school that is featured in the film is the SEED charter boarding school in Washington, D.C. SEED seems to deserve all the praise that it receives from Guggenheim, CBS’s 60 Minutes, and elsewhere. It has remarkable rates of graduation and college acceptance. But SEED spends $35,000 per student, as compared to average current spending for public schools of about one third that amount. Is our society prepared to open boarding schools for tens of thousands of inner-city students and pay what it costs to copy the SEED model? Those who claim that better education for the neediest students won’t require more money cannot use SEED to support their argument.
Guggenheim seems to demand that public schools start firing “bad” teachers so they can get the great results that one of every five charter schools gets. But he never explains how difficult it is to identify “bad” teachers. If one looks only at test scores, teachers in affluent suburbs get higher ones. If one uses student gains or losses as a general measure, then those who teach the neediest children—English-language learners, troubled students, autistic students—will see the smallest gains, and teachers will have an incentive to avoid districts and classes with large numbers of the neediest students.
Ultimately the job of hiring teachers, evaluating them, and deciding who should stay and who should go falls to administrators. We should be taking a close look at those who award due process rights (the accurate term for “tenure”) to too many incompetent teachers. The best way to ensure that there are no bad or ineffective teachers in our public schools is to insist that we have principals and supervisors who are knowledgeable and experienced educators. Yet there is currently a vogue to recruit and train principals who have little or no education experience. (The George W. Bush Institute just announced its intention to train 50,000 new principals in the next decade and to recruit noneducators for this sensitive post.)
Waiting for “Superman” is the most important public-relations coup that the critics of public education have made so far. Their power is not to be underestimated. For years, right-wing critics demanded vouchers and got nowhere. Now, many of them are watching in amazement as their ineffectual attacks on “government schools” and their advocacy of privately managed schools with public funding have become the received wisdom among liberal elites. Despite their uneven record, charter schools have the enthusiastic endorsement of the Obama administration, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Dell Foundation. In recent months, The New York Times has published three stories about how charter schools have become the favorite cause of hedge fund executives. According to the Times, when Andrew Cuomo wanted to tap into Wall Street money for his gubernatorial campaign, he had to meet with the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), a pro-charter group.
Dominated by hedge fund managers who control billions of dollars, DFER has contributed heavily to political candidates for local and state offices who pledge to promote charter schools. (Its efforts to unseat incumbents in three predominantly black State Senate districts in New York City came to nothing; none of its hand-picked candidates received as much as 30 percent of the vote in the primary elections, even with the full-throated endorsement of the city’s tabloids.) Despite the loss of local elections and the defeat of Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty (who had appointed the controversial schools chancellor Michelle Rhee), the combined clout of these groups, plus the enormous power of the federal government and the uncritical support of the major media, presents a serious challenge to the viability and future of public education.
It bears mentioning that nations with high-performing school systems—whether Korea, Singapore, Finland, or Japan—have succeeded not by privatizing their schools or closing those with low scores, but by strengthening the education profession. They also have less poverty than we do. Fewer than 5 percent of children in Finland live in poverty, as compared to 20 percent in the United States. Those who insist that poverty doesn’t matter, that only teachers matter, prefer to ignore such contrasts.
If we are serious about improving our schools, we will take steps to improve our teacher force, as Finland and other nations have done. That would mean better screening to select the best candidates, higher salaries, better support and mentoring systems, and better working conditions. Guggenheim complains that only one in 2,500 teachers loses his or her teaching certificate, but fails to mention that 50 percent of those who enter teaching leave within five years, mostly because of poor working conditions, lack of adequate resources, and the stress of dealing with difficult children and disrespectful parents. Some who leave “fire themselves”; others were fired before they got tenure. We should also insist that only highly experienced teachers become principals (the “head teacher” in the school), not retired businessmen and military personnel. Every school should have a curriculum that includes a full range of studies, not just basic skills. And if we really are intent on school improvement, we must reduce the appalling rates of child poverty that impede success in school and in life.
There is a clash of ideas occurring in education right now between those who believe that public education is not only a fundamental right but a vital public service, akin to the public provision of police, fire protection, parks, and public libraries, and those who believe that the private sector is always superior to the public sector. Waiting for “Superman” is a powerful weapon on behalf of those championing the “free market” and privatization. It raises important questions, but all of the answers it offers require a transfer of public funds to the private sector. The stock market crash of 2008 should suffice to remind us that the managers of the private sector do not have a monopoly on success.
Public education is one of the cornerstones of American democracy. The public schools must accept everyone who appears at their doors, no matter their race, language, economic status, or disability. Like the huddled masses who arrived from Europe in years gone by, immigrants from across the world today turn to the public schools to learn what they need to know to become part of this society. The schools should be far better than they are now, but privatizing them is no solution.
In the final moments of Waiting for “Superman,” the children and their parents assemble in auditoriums in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Silicon Valley, waiting nervously to see if they will win the lottery. As the camera pans the room, you see tears rolling down the cheeks of children and adults alike, all their hopes focused on a listing of numbers or names. Many people react to the scene with their own tears, sad for the children who lose. I had a different reaction. First, I thought to myself that the charter operators were cynically using children as political pawns in their own campaign to promote their cause. (Gail Collins in The New York Times had a similar reaction and wondered why they couldn’t just send the families a letter in the mail instead of subjecting them to public rejection.) Second, I felt an immense sense of gratitude to the much-maligned American public education system, where no one has to win a lottery to gain admission.
The ending is wonderful. And the beat goes on for charter schools. This from Politco this morning.
GROUP ONCE AGAIN RANKS INDIANA’S CHARTER SCHOOL LAW NO. 1: The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is out with its ninth annual ranking of state charter school laws. The advocacy organization said that Indiana, for the third year in a row, has the strongest charter law in the country because it “does not cap charter school growth, includes multiple authorizers, and provides a fair amount of autonomy and accountability. Indiana has also made notable strides in recent years to provide more equitable funding to charter schools, although some work remains to be done.”
Kentucky, which in 2017 became the 45th state to pass a charter school law, also gets a nod from NAPCS for having the 10th strongest law in the country. “Kentucky lawmakers took great care in writing this law to ensure that the state heeded the lessons learned within the first quarter-century of the charter movement and also took into the account the state constitutional constraints that exist,” the report says.
The aim is clear: Unlimited expansion and private control financed by taking of tax dollars that should go to improve public schools.
Former St. Louis School board president Peter Downs, author of “Schoolhouse Shams: Myths and Misinformation in School Reform” , had a negative review of Waiting for Superman.” published in the Beacon.When Public radio took over the Beacon, they removed his review. (Like the Post Dispatch, Public radio bars me from making comments). It is shameful that they removed Peter Downs’ review of Waiting for Superman. Tell them I said so, if you get a chance. Unlike me, Peter Downs is respected and disciplined in what he says. The charter forces broke laws to get the elected board removed from power more than a decade ago. St. Louis is inching towards becoming a democracy again….do not hold your breath.
I am no longer getting block notices from public radio in St. Louis, and I am also listed as a “top commenter”. Not sure if anyone intervened on my behalof, or if was just a glitch—in either direction.
“Waiting for Superman” is a well produced propaganda film about the “wonders” of charter schools. Since the time it was released, we now know that the stench of privatization is making America ill, and charters have not produced on their many promises. Privatization is a movement backed by billionaires and dark money full of distortion and lies. It has resulted in endless marketing of bad ideas and exploitation of the poor. Privatization has increased segregation, waste, fraud and embezzlement as there is very little oversight and accountability in privatization whose real goal is not to improve education. The main objectives of privatization is to destroy public schools in order to move billions of public dollars into private companies. A secondary goal is to quash democratic governance of public schools and crush unions. It is not the “civil rights issue” of our times as it is the assault on the public institution of public education that is a legitimate civil rights issue.
“Waiting” was propaganda and lies. Like rheeform, it is a hoax
NIH is the National Institutes of Health, the largest research facility in the US and is located in Bethesda, MD. A researcher studied the effects of poverty on children for two years. Obviously this study isn’t as important as ‘knowledge’ gained from thinking about the subject.
There was mention in the article of paying teachers more to keep the best ones. Whatever happened to that thought? Don’t see much of that occurring. The best ones can take being beaten down by a system that doesn’t recognize their abilities. That consequence isn’t discussed.
……
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Stresses of poverty may impair learning ability in young children
NIH funded research suggests stress hormones inhibit brain function, stifle achievement.
The stresses of poverty — such as crowded conditions, financial worry, and lack of adequate child care — lead to impaired learning ability in children from impoverished backgrounds, according to a theory by a researcher funded by the National Institutes of Health. The theory is based on several years of studies matching stress hormone levels to behavioral and school readiness test results in young children from impoverished backgrounds.
Further, the theory holds, finding ways to reduce stress in the home and school environment could improve children’s well being and allow them to be more successful academically…
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/stresses-poverty-may-impair-learning-ability-young-child
“There was mention in the article of paying teachers more to keep the best ones.”
I assume that means paying all teachers more, not the failed idea of merit pay, suggested to be a failure by a Vanderbilt study a year or so ago.
Roy: Indiana promotes merit pay. I’ve complained to my State Representative and State Senator to no avail. They believe this is a way to encourage teachers to want to work harder. Merit pay destroys morale when teachers need to be able collaborate together on an even playing field.
Quite frankly, I’d have been disgusted if a teacher did the same job I was doing and got money for being better than me. Some might toady up to the evaluator while some evaluators might like some personalities better than others.. having nothing to do with doing a better job and being paid a bonus.
And we might mention that the very idea of simply “paying” more for better work is overwhelmingly out of touch with the profession of teaching. It begs the argument that teachers are generally lazy, uninspired, clueless and negligent because they want more money in order to actually do the work.
ciedie: I agree with you BUT it would have been great to have earned enough money to live a decent life. As a single parent, I had to watch every nickel. My thoughts were constantly on, “How will I make it through to the next pay day.” I could take my daughter out once in a while to McDonald’s but couldn’t afford to buy myself a meal. Try living like that for a while. I had a Master’s degree and the pay was totally lousy.
A group of New York City public school teachers and parents from the Grassroots Education Movement wrote and produced this documentary in response to Davis Guggenheim’s highly misleading film, Waiting for “Superman.” Guggenheim’s film would have audiences believe that free-market competition, standardized tests, destroying teacher unions, and above all, the proliferation of charter schools are just what this country needs to create great schools.
The film, The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman highlights the real life experiences of public school parents and educators to show how these so-called reforms are actually hurting education. The film talks about the kinds of real reform–inside schools and in society as a whole–that we urgently need to genuinely transform education in this country.
Since the official premiere at the Assembly Hall of The Riverside Church in Harlem on May 19, 2011, featuring historian Diane Ravitch as our honored guest, our free offer of the DVD and permission to copy and distribute the film have produced an estimated 15,000 copies in circulation. Requests have come in from all 50 states and 6 continents. Screenings have been set up by unions, parent groups, college professors and libraries all over the nation, in India, Turkey, England, New Zealand and Australia
It can be found on You Tube and Vimeo
Not just horrible anti-public school propaganda but a horribly made film as well.
In a film about the “perils” of public education, why were no public school teachers interviewed?
When the DC teachers vote against Michelle Rhee’s merit based pay program, which would potentially double their salary, the film never asks why. We never hear from a teacher why they would vote against a potentially significant increase in salary.
A good film would examine both sides of the issue. A propaganda film already knows the answers and doesn’t want you to hear them.
This was just sent out from the National Institutes of Health:
Monday, January 29, 2018
Graduates of early childhood program show greater educational gains as adults
NIH-funded study observes higher attainment of college degrees.
Students who participated in an intensive childhood education program from preschool to third grade were more likely to achieve an academic degree beyond high school, compared to a similar group that received other intervention services as children, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Researchers led by Arthur Reynolds, Ph.D., at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, followed the 30-year progress of 989 children who attended the Child-Parent Centers (CPC) program in inner-city Chicago as preschoolers. Their findings appear in JAMA Pediatrics.
“This study suggests that a high-quality, early childhood intervention program, especially one that extends through third grade, can have benefits well into adult life,” said James A. Griffin, Ph.D., deputy chief of the Child Development Branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
The CPC program provides intensive instruction in reading and math, combined with frequent educational field trips, from pre-kindergarten through third grade. The program also provides parents with job and parenting skills training, educational classes and social services. In addition, the program encouraged parents to volunteer in classrooms, assist with field trips and participate in parenting support groups….
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/graduates-early-childhood-program-show-greater-educational-gains-adults
I was going to say that Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman but someone else already did. In 2015 I wrote an essay critiquing the Waiting For Superman so-called documentary.
One of many things that bugs me is they never answered the question for the winners of the lotteries, how well did they do in their old school vs their new schools.
I will not post it here as it is over 4,000 words but here is an excerpt: Had he [Geoffrey Canada] stayed in the Bronx he would have gone to Morris High School. He says that if he had gone to Morris High School he would not be where he is today. How do you know that you would not have done as well if you had gone the high school you were supposed to, i.e., Morris High School, South Bronx?
Morris High School has had about 2 dozen notable graduates (including Milton Berle and Armand Hammer), most in the first half of the 20th Century. But here are three closer to Canada’s time.
Colin Powell is a former US Army General and Secretary of State. He would have went there in the mid-1950s or so, a little before Canada. United States Attorney Benito Romano (late 1960s) would have gone during Canada’s high school days and Val Ramos (mid to late 1970s) International Flamenco guitarist, was little after Canada’s time. So, how is Morris High School a failure factory? How is it Canada would not be where he is today if he had gone to Morris High School?
I do not know of any notable graduates of my high school, Neil A. Armstrong High School in Plymouth (Minneapolis), Minnesota.
My father attended a private school that was famous, among other things, for producing the people who founded an oil company that morphed into Exxon and made the honor system at Princeton in the days of Woodrow Wilson. He became a good community man. A dairy farmer.
School notables may prove something but I do not know what. If we take care of all the cows, and we milk them, their cream naturally rises to the top.
“Waiting for (the Koch) Superman” didn’t do well at the box office. Its total worldwide take was about $6.4 million. I’m sure that most of the people that went to see it also was some of those that voted for Trump and call themselves tea party Americans.
That translates into about 811,153 people that went to see this film in a country with more than 320 million people or 0.25% (a quarter of one percent) of the total population.
The YouTube video of “The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman” has been viewed almost 150,000 times vs “Waiting for Superman’s” trailer that has been viewed on YouTube almost 99k times.
Interesting idea Lloyd. I live in a very Tea Party place, and I would have never heard of the film here. I think the Tea Party is mostly listening to the right wing talk show people, oblivious to the work of this filmmaker. I bow, however, to your better grasp of the numbers. What you say will cause me to think a bit.
“Broadly speaking, multiple surveys have found between 10% and 30% of Americans identify as a member of the Tea Party movement.”
If this is correct, that means there are between 32-million to 96-million Americans that identify as a member of the Tea Party movement. According to the numbers, less than 820k saw the film means a lot of people that identify with the Tea Party didn’t see it but how many of those 829k did identify with the Tea Party?
On the other hand, maybe most of them were Koch brothers’ libertarians. There are 511,277 voters registered as Libertarian in the 27 states that report Libertarian registration statistics and Washington, D.C.
If you are a Koch brothers’ libertarian does that also mean you identify with the Tea Party movement since the Koch brothers bankrolled the tea party movement?
I am thinking about my friends who beat nails for a living and listen to a host of people on talk radio. To the extent they are influenced by the Koch Brothers, they have no idea. Perhaps is is why that group is so malleable.
There is always an exception. For instance, a former friend of mine I had known since being a child, earned a physics degree from Berkeley back in the 1970s, and he voted for Trump and listens to the Alt-Right media crap and believes it all. He told me once that while he was attending Berkeley, he had sex, late at night, on the steps leading to the university’s library. He smoked pot. He collected unemployment for half of his working life by manipulating his bosses to fire him.
But not anymore. The Alt-Right saved his life and now he condemns anyone that does the same thing he did when he was younger.
Lloyd: I have a good friend who is wealthy and had a degree in education although she never had to teach. Her husband was (retired) a successful lawyer. They are definitely upper middle class. They both support Trump and listen to Fox. Her husband used to make fun of me because I supported Obama.
They have a condo on the beach in Florida and go there every winter. My friend, while Trump was a candidate, once sent me an email telling about how Trump was the best candidate because he had his own money and wouldn’t be bought out. My friend once commented that it was a good thing that Trump was standing up to Kim Jong Un…N. Korea. [Normally we do NOT ever talk about politics. We have no common ground.]
My financial advisor, who is extremely wealthy, dislikes Trump immensely. His wife supports Trump. She is a wonderful caring, educated person. She does mission work to help poor people in Africa several weeks at a time at various times throughout the year.
I can’t figure it out. The far right media is affecting these people.
I remember driving through a wealthy area in N.W. Indiana when Trump was a candidate. Their lawns were covered with Trump signs. My assumption was that these rich people wanted tax breaks that only the GOP would deliver.
Lloyd: interesting story about your friend the reformed rightist. It strikes me that the sexual encounter on the steps of the library was similar to the present political stance. It was all about somebody getting screwed.
Before this is dismissed as glib humor, I would like to say I am very serious. Many of my liberated friends who saw their actions as left of center moved dramatically to the right when it came to keeping their own money. For some reason, gimme shelter moved easily into gimme tax shelter for the generation of people a bit older than I am.
It was a bitter disappointment when this former friend shifted far, far, far, to the right. The key turning point was greed. He has dreamed all of his life of being wealthy and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and his house in the attempt. Today, half of his income comes from Social Security. Along with his shift toward Koch brothers branded libertarianism, he started to criticise SS but when I challenged him to stop accepting the monthly payments from SS, he shot back, “I earned that money.”
As if no one else earned their SS and yet he went out of his way most of his working life to get out of work and collect unemployment insurance. I never collected any unemployment insurance and when it came to collecting SS, I was punished because I was a public school teacher for thirty years.
During the 15 years before I went into education, I paid into SS and was qualified for about $600 a month because of the 15 years I paid into it, but because I was a public school teacher for the next 30 years, that amount was cut in half.
And what did that former friend say? That I should have stayed in the private sector like him because public sector workers were going to lose it all once the Libertarians took over the country. His favorite far-right talking head is Dennis Prager, another lying fraud with a soft, gently grandfatherly voice that seduces anyone eligible for to join the deplorable category.
That’s not all. This former friend also served in the U.S. Marines and fought in Vietnam. His medical provider is the VA but he criticises that public sector medical system all the time and he supports closing down the VA medical system and getting a voucher so he can find a private sector doctor for his medical care.
Now, this former friend never had private sector medical coverage in his life because he was an independent contractor for the time he did work. I’ve had medical coverage from both the private sector and then after I retired from the VA because most teachers retire without medical care and I was eligible for the VA.
The former friend can’t compare.
I can.
From that experience, I think the VA medical system is better by far from the profit mongering, insurance controlled private sector medical care system in this country.
To get rich, he also turned to God and became a born-again evangelical fundamentalist Christian, because he was brainwashed to believe that if he lived by that religious sects rules, God would step in and help him get rich. That was years ago and he forgot the original reason he returned to religion after decades away from it. But I haven’t forgotten who it was that seduced him with carrots of wealth to become a fundamentalist Chrisitan again.
His father was a fundamentalist, fire-breathing preacher who also sexually molested all of his children. This was his world as a child and the reason he left the born again church (of hate everyone else) until he was secluded to return to it long after his father had died.
6 millions is actually pretty high for a documentary. In fact, it’s the 35th highest grossing documentary at the moment just behind Roger Moore’s Roger and Me so I wouldn’t underestimate it’s influence based on it’s box office take. It’s also the type of movie that is shown to large groups in school districts and professional conference settings which are not counted in box office totals. It’s not important how many people see it as it is WHO sees it.
At the same time, YouTube views don’t translate to actual viewings of the film. A view on YouTube is counted after someone has watched for 30 seconds. Inconvenient Truth is certainly the more honest of the two films but it’s an amateur film and can be difficult to watch unless you’ve got a vested interest in the subject.
Waiting for Superman was shown at the annual meeting of the National PTA, perhaps because Gates gave them millions.
It was shown at both national party conventions in 2012.
It was shown for free in housing projects. It was shown to state legislatures.
Gates spent millions on PR and free showings.
I wonder how many in total have seen the rebuttal documentary.
The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman on Vimeo
This video describes the destruction in NY a decade ago.
“Waiting for “Superman” and the other films appeal to a broad apprehension that the nation is falling behind in global competition.”
“Race to the Crash”
We’re falling behind
In Race to the Crash
American kind
Are losing the dash
Redouble we must
Our efforts, with speed
Till Earth is a bust
Consumed by the greed
“Waiting for Superman”
Waiting for Superman
Waiting for Gates
Waiting for SuperVAM
Waiting for fates
Waiting for charters
Waiting for tests
Waiting for vouchers
And all of the rest
Waiting to hear
If the outcome is great
Might take ten years
But is well worth the wait
“It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.” — Bill Gates (Sept 21, 2013)
I was so appalled by this film, that I walked out of the theater, crying bullshit, before it was finished! And this was at Bellingham, WA’s alternative movie theater!
This just came out as an opinion in the NYT. I know that it is ‘old news’ but it spells disaster for the poor black students who are affected. I worked as a Sub Center South teacher for several years in Chicago, working only on days when my suburban job was on vacation. The daily pay back then was $85 and I’d work between 5-11 days each school year. I feel for these children who might have to walk through gang areas and risk their lives to get an education.
………………
Save Chicago’s Public Schools
Instead of trying to improve troubled schools, the city is shutting them down.
CHICAGO — On Feb. 28, the Chicago Board of Education is expected to vote on a disastrous proposal to close four public high schools with declining enrollment around the Englewood neighborhood of southwest Chicago. The affected children, who are overwhelmingly black and poor, would go to public schools out of the neighborhood or be encouraged to attend one of the charter schools being pushed by business and religious interests.
The schools would close over three years, and in their place, the city plans to build an $85 million high school in Englewood. But the school won’t be up and running until September 2019 at the earliest — more than a full school year from now….
In 2013, the city shut down roughly 50 public schools in what was described as the largest mass closing of public schools in an American city. It was a fiasco. Some neighborhoods lost nearly all of their public schools, and many children were forced to attend schools far from home. Nearly 12,000 students changed schools; 88 percent of them were black, and a disproportionate number were considered “vulnerable.”
But it didn’t work. Even when students transferred to higher-performing schools, they experienced an achievement drop in the first year and minimal gains afterward, the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, found last year.
Communities suffer when public schools close. Neighborhood schools are essential to creating a shared sense of community. And having a school close to home keeps children safer. Gangs all too often impose boundaries to mark their turf, and the poorer the neighborhood, the more intricate and plentiful are the gang boundaries. So children can be risking their lives by venturing out of their neighborhoods simply to attend school…
Since Mr. Emanuel took office in 2011, Englewood’s four neighborhood high schools have seen their resources slashed, with almost $20 million in education funds cut from the budget since 2012. This crisis of under-enrollment is of the city’s own making, a result of chronic disinvestment. Instead of closing the schools, the city should give our schools and our students the support they deserve.
Where are the kids today?
The Indiana Catholic Conference (ICC) is the public policy voice of the Catholic bishops in Indiana regarding state and national matters.
Note: This first ICAN report covers the first two weeks of the ICC’s involvement in the 2021 Indiana General Assembly. Weekly, the ICC will release an ICAN report in addition to the podcast found on our website and within our email newsletter.
During the first two weeks of the session, and despite legislators being limited to filing 10 bills, numerous bills have been filed and assigned to committee. Listed below are the bills the ICC is monitoring most closely. The list is not exhaustive yet highlights the issues of greatest priority.
HB1005 Various Schools Matters (Rep. Behning, Indianapolis) Expands the school choice program eligibility from 150 percent to 300 percent of Free or Reduced-Price School Meals (FRL). The bill also expands the number of “pathways” for school choice and creates state facilitated Educational Savings Accounts (ESAs). Increasing opportunities for school choice has long been a priority for the ICC. With expanded choice, more parents will have options for choosing the best educational setting for their children.
ICC supports this bill.
HB1074 End of Life Options (Rep. Pierce, Bloomington) Allows individuals to make a request to take life-ending medication. The Church has always opposed assisted suicide/euthanasia.
ICC opposes this bill.
HB1237 and SB 204 Health Care Advance Directives (Rep. Young, Franklin and Sen. Rogers, Granger, respectively) Clarifies the laws regarding health care advance directives, making it easier for individuals to understand the requirements for laying out their preferences for medical care if unresponsive. The ICC collaborated with interested parties on a similar bill last session.
ICC supports these bills.
HB1358 and SB 246 Pregnancy Accommodations (Rep. Negele, Attica and Sen. Alting, Lafayette, respectively) Requires and employers to provide reasonable employment accommodations for a pregnant employee. The House and Senate bills mirror each other. Supporting women in the workplace leads to healthier pregnancies and less stress on expectant mothers. The ICC worked on this issue last session.
ICC supports these bills.
HB1439 Coerced Abortions, Protection Of A Fetus, And Wrongful Death Or Injury Of A Child (Rep. King, Indianapolis) Requires that a woman seeking an abortion must be informed that a coerced abortion is illegal and increases penalties for intentionally coercing an expectant mother into having an abortion. The Church defends the sanctity of life through all stages.
ICC supports this bill.
SB249 Net Metering for Electricity Generation (Sen. Alting, Lafayette) Extends the time Hoosiers may use “net metering”, allowing solar customers to get market price for excess energy produced by solar panels. “Net metering” acts as an incentive for solar customers considering up-front costs of solar panels. The Catholic social tradition supports responsible transition to renewable forms of energy.
ICC supports this bill.
SEA148 Zoning and Housing Matters (Sen. Doriot, New Paris) From the 2020 session, the only bill vetoed by Governor Holcomb during that session. The bill prohibits local governments from regulating landlord-tenant relationships and opens avenues for speedier evictions. Should an SEA148 veto override or this language come into play during the 2021 session, the ICC will voice opposition. The preemptive repeal of local ordinances violates the Church’s understanding of subsidiarity, effectively stripping local governments from making decisions according to their housing needs. In addition, the bill would place tenants unnecessarily at risk of eviction.
ICC opposes this bill.
Wow, this was an amazing piece. I learned a lot and tapping from my own experiences,
I attended public schools all through my preuniversity education. Never did I feel I was deprived of comprehensive education nor did I feel worse off than uni peers who did attend private schools. Private schools are such an oddity to me, that people would voluntarily pay exorbitant amounts of cash that the public system for free, at least in Canada. Of course there are cases when the education system needs to be completely rebuilt; a Brazilian friend commented that public primary schools are awful there and private ones are where you go to learn. Public universities are free there, but one has to score highly in the Brazilian SAT to claim it, but how can a student be properly educated and ready when the public primary system fails them? The other choice is to attend a private university, which requires tuition and are not as well-regarded compared to public ones. We both agreed that it was classist move at work: only those who can afford private tuition receive “good education” while denying those who can’t, a chance at class mobility. Education ultimately decides class and class dictates your life. Good, comprehensive education must be widely available to everyone without thinking of profits, while fixing the faults that privitazation and austerity measures have brought upon countries.
Thank you again for your wonderful piece!