Waiting For Superman is an advocacy documentary that explores issues facing Public Education in the United Sates. The film appears to be making a case for charter schools to replace the traditional public school systems especially in low income areas. Charter schools take public money, but are run privately. Charter schools compete with public schools and are independent of the local school board. The point-of-view of the film and its sponsors appears to be that public schools have failed nationwide and that the only solution is privatization with public money. A charter school may also take private donations. Some charter schools are independently created by parents and teachers in a neighborhood, others are chains run by corporations.

Waiting For Superman primarily deals with issues facing over crowded, under funded intercity public schools.  The children who live here have no choice but to attend substandard schools or try to get into a charter school. The charters are popular and only have room for a certain number of students. By law when charter schools have too many applicants they must hold a lottery to see who will get the limited number of places for children outside schools district.

As a documentary Waiting For Superman quickly establishes its point-of-view. The camera work and editing are basic. There are good graphics and animated examples of facts. The quasi-documentary style of this film is suspect and annoying. There is someone asking questions, off camera who is never really seen, only heard. The voice asks children leading questions, then coaches them to elicit certain responses.  The film spends a lot of time portraying the agony of families trying to get their children into the better schools through lotteries. You can empathize with the mothers, fathers and young children, but what purpose does it serve in the film except to create a more dramatic ending? What is never addressed is how these schools compete with public schools for tax money? Is this money coming from the federal and/or state government?

Waiting For Superman examines some possible solutions and successful attempts by charter schools to remedy certain problems. Unfortunately the filmmakers take the simplistic view that all the problems with public schools are the fault of teachers, teachers unions, and tenure. “Teachers and the unions are blocking progress.” The main problem as presented is tenure, which, apparently, is given to public school teachers in two years according to the documentary.  Tenure as depicted  means that an individual now has the job for life and can’t be fired. This is not exactly true, but it does preclude meritorious advancement and pay rises according to the filmmakers. The documentary doesn’t mention that the majority of K through 12 teachers are women who have faced lower pay and other hardships in the workplace.

The mantra of Waiting For Superman is, teachers are good; unions are bad; unions protect bad teachers and prevent progress and innovation. If teachers are good individually, it’s difficult to understand why collectively they become bad? Are teachers good only until they get tenure? According to the documentary, innovations instituted in charter schools can’t be introduced into public schools because of teacher’s unions.

One charter school claims success by eliminating “tracking” which they perceive as a problem.  Tracking is the process by which students are “tracked” through courses based on their previous work. The charter school, KIPP, LA Prep Middle School (part of a chain) does not track students because they feel not tracking gives all learners a chance to keep up. This sounds good on the surface but the film never discusses if the new system slows down learning for the best students and/or possibly leads to teaching to the lowest common denominator.  Article KIPP GETS MORE PUBLIC MONEY.

When it comes to inner city schools the documentary does not consider issues like poverty, state budget cuts, the economy, social problems, bias, class size and mismanagement by school boards. In fact the documentary claims that it’s the public schools fault that the neighborhood is bad.

There is an interview with Michelle Rhee, who had three years teaching experience when hired to be head of the Washington, DC school district. She immediately goes on a budget cutting, closing of schools and sacking of school principals blitz in DC that accomplished very little but alienated parents and teachers. Her contention is that the teachers have representation but not the students.  ”… teachers unions stop progress.” There is a shot of her sitting in a class whispering to a student, asking “what do you think of  your teacher?” She appears to have treated educators with contempt. She is no longer with the DC school district.

Bill Gates is interviewed and talks about how education needs to create engineers, scientists and mathematicians to help the economy and innovation. Perhaps a billion dollars to help train young teachers in the United States for this task would be proactive. Also help for inner city families, offering their children scholarships for preschool education. Instruction for illiterate parents might also be beneficial.

Inner city schools are notoriously overcrowded, with run down facilities and children who are gang members. Waiting For Superman makes it seem that some how, “good teachers” can make that all go away. Good teachers can teach students to read with no books available! In fact it seems the documentary itself is waiting for teachers to become Supermen! If only the system could get rid of those bad teachers that can’t be fired because of the union. According to the documentary that can’t happen so the only solution is charter schools. Do charter schools compete with public schools for tax money? Is this money coming from the federal and/or state government?

Not addressed in Waiting For Superman is the fact that Public Education in the United States has been under direct attack for the last thirty years. Many educators believe the goal is to “privatize” public education with taxpayer’s dollars. Ultimately families would have to pay to send their children to these private schools. The actual goal for charter schools is to become for-profit private schools. The bottom line for any for-profit entity is profit. The United States would become a third world country with no public education, no health care, no social benefits what-so-ever, thus creating a huge underclass, formally known as the middle class.

Waiting For Superman spends about fifteen minutes of the 111 minutes film running time, on middleclass suburban schools where there are less problems but the students still don’t score as well in math, science and reading skills as students in other countries. Once again the only solution is charter schools.

There are valid criticisms that can be made against teacher’s unions and the Public School systems in the United States. The documentary makes the case that things are so bad the whole system needs to be scrapped and replaced with private schools who don’t have unions.

Waiting For Superman is topical and does show some of the innovative methods used in charter schools. But it could have gone a lot farther to discuss issues and solutions to fixing or reinventing Public Schools. A lot of time that is spent on waiting for the results of charter lotteries that could have been used for a better purpose. The filmmakers do not give enough of the other side of the story for you to come to any conclusions about how to solve the problems facing education in the United States. Is the one size fits all inner city charter school model appropriate for the entire country? Is “privatization” the answer to every problem facing the US today? Why do public schools work well in other countries, the ones with all those high scores in math, science and reading? What role do the arts play in education? Has liaise-fare everything worked well in the past?

J R Martin

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