Waiting for Superman is an emotional film that follows five public school students who compete in lotteries to attend public charter schools. This film was made by the producer of An Inconvenient Truth, Davis Guggenheim. Waiting for Superman has been screened at a variety of film festivals, including Sundance, and was released on September 24, 2010.
Rethinking Schools editor Stan Karp wrote this after viewing the film:
“The message of the film is that public schools are failing because of bad teachers and their unions. The film's "solution," to the minimal extent it suggests one, is to replace them with "great" charter schools and teachers who have less power over their schools and classrooms.
This message is not just wrong. In the current political climate, it's toxic.”
This film tells a moving story about problems and injustice in public schools but it blames the problems of schools on teachers unions. Why is that ? We should ask why the film focuses on teachers’ unions and not on poverty, race, school bureaucracies, or the foundations of the rich who support these initiatives.
Waiting for Superman says several important things about the challenges of the public education system. However, the central message—"charters are good" and "teachers unions are bad"—oversimplifies complicated issues and promotes a particular corporate view of school reform. This is the viewpoint promoted by the Bill Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, by Michele Rhee and Joel Klien among others.
Charters are usually public schools using public money but without the direct over sight of school districts, school administrations and school boards. They often do not allow teachers to have a union and they usually do not have a union contract. Charters are established by state laws and promoted by federal legislation including No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
In California, research shows some charters do better than some public schools, some do worse. They are about average. The evidence is the same in New York City.
What are the clear effect of charters? Charter school teachers are paid about 20% less, and usually are expected to work much longer hours. The average teacher works 69 hours per week for an average salary of around $51,000 in California.
In charters teachers are usually receive less benefits and little or no job security. You can be dismissed by the director of the charter for almost any reason.
Charter advocates and other neo liberal reformers blamed the teachers unions for their own failure to improve public schools. Persons who claim to be reformers attempt to break the domination of the bureaucracy, such as in Washington D.C. under Chancellor Michelle Rhee, often focus on bringing in superintendents with little background in administration and public schools, the firing of administrators and some teachers for failing to reform failing schools. Recently Rhee’s position has been endangered because her boss, Mayor Fenty lost the election. He lost in part because of the arrogant and abusive style of Rhee. It is the corporate world of individualism, competition, and consumption opposed to the public sphere of learning civic cooperation and a pluralist democratic ethos. To date this strategy has produced a high teacher and administrator turn over, but it has not improved academic achievement.
In New Orleans, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., New York, and elsewhere reconstitution has been achieved by establishing charter schools and bringing in an outside management company to radically alter the school culture. In other places the school districts have worked with charters such as KIPP, or intervention systems such as Wested, Accelerated Schools, the Comer Project as the primary intervention system.
KIPP, the Knowledge is Power Program is one of several school restructuring programs that have emerged in the last two decades. KIPP schools are organized for academic achievement. They insist upon a contract between the home and the school. They do not have unions for their teachers. There are currently 57 KIPP public schools in 16 states and the District of Columbia enrolling more than 14,000 students. Across the KIPP network, 55 of the existing 57 schools are charter schools. The majority of KIPP schools, 48 of 57, are middle schools designed to serve fifth through eighth grade students.
KIPP schools are free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools where low income students develop the knowledge, skills, and character traits needed to succeed in top quality high schools, colleges. KIPP schools provide a structured, academic centered learning environment, and more time spent in classes. All of the students and the parents sign a contract to complete their work and their homework. If students and parents do not agree to participate in this structured college prep environment, they are not accepted in a KIPP school. By creating an on task academic environment for all students, KIPP has been successful in getting a significant number of its students to graduate and to enter college. You can find out more about KIPP Charters at http://www.KIPP.org
Why do some charter work better than some public schools?
To begin with most public schools are doing quite well. Up to 50% of the schools, mostly in middle class areas, are doing quite well, graduating students, preparing them for college or career. Charters work better than some schools substantially for the same reason that Catholic schools work better for many students( even though up to 40% of Catholic school students are not Catholic. They are simply students whose parents have chosen a more constricted school system with a closer tie to values.-much like charters.)
Most students in charters want to be there or their parents want them to be there. Students and their families need to apply and to be accepted. The school establishes a culture of school work, discipline and authority. < Note. Most teenagers need some authority.> If you don’t fit into this school culture you are encouraged to go elsewhere. Such a positive school culture is mutually reinforcing bringing students back to the study table when they tend to wander.
In some public schools, a group of the students don’t want to be there.- or they do not want to do the work. A significant minority of students are reluctant to work, to pay attention, and to follow school rules. The teachers have to spend considerable time and energy trying to keep students paying attention, doing their work. The neo liberal reformers avoid this issue, but teachers will tell you that it is difficult to teach in some schools.
And, some of the parents don’t want to work with the school, others don’t know how to work with the teachers. And, some parents don’t work with the students. In this more disrupted environment, even good students get distracted, bullied, and off track and fail to perform.
See my book, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. 2010. and my blog,
www.choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com
For detailed alternatives see, Broader, Bolder Approach. http://www.boldapproach.org/