Waiting For Superman Explores Education Reform Through The Eyes of Children
by Latoya Peterson
One hot summer night in June, I cradled my brown industry pass and debated watching a surely depressing movie about school reform or a (relatively) light-hearted look at North Korea. One of the first benefits to joining the Public Media Corps was the access to SILVERDOCS, the annual documentary film festival produced by the AFI Silver Theatre and The Discovery Channel. Late on a weekday night, we finished up our training and trooped over to Silver Spring, hoping to catch at least one of the films before the festivities finished for the evening.
My friend Brittany and I both decided that we wanted to at least check out the film on educational reform called Waiting for Superman – and hour and a half later, we exited the theater with pain in our hearts and tears in our eyes.
*Spoilers Ahead*
Nothing that we saw should shock anyone who has been paying attention to the increasingly desperate debate over our nation’s schools. The synopsis of the film is as follows:
When we think of No Child Left Behind we likely think of the 2001 legislation that expanded the federal role in schools and has become a controversial focal point of education policy. But when filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, IT MIGHT GET LOUD) examines this policy and the state of education today, he reminds us that “statistics” indeed have names: Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy and Emily, whose stories make up the captivating heart of WAITING FOR “SUPERMAN”. In Guggenheim’s epic assessment of the rise and fall of the U.S. school system, we are confronted with much sobering information. Yet he does leave us with some hope that education reformers are taking innovative approaches to reshaping the culture, and truly refusing to leave any student behind.
Watching this film is kind of like bleeding from thousands of paper cuts. Guggenheim introduces each child and their back story, and uses their experiences to illuminate different aspects of our failing educational system. The stories cross race, region, class, and ethnicity to produce a heartbreaking tapestry. Each of these children are so bright, full of life…and dangling on the precipice of educational reform.
Francisco, a sweet faced first grader, is warned that he will fail the first grade if he doesn’t learn to read. The problem? Francisco reads with his mother for an hour each night, and is often captured on camera at the back of the class, reading through a variety of picture books. Francisco’s mother has been trying in vain to get a parent-teacher conference, but realizes that with the large class sizes and apathetic teacher, she would be better served trying to place Francisco into a charter school. Bianca is enrolled in private school at the beginning of the film, but her mother had her hours cut a work, and the school bars Bianca from her class graduation ceremony. Bianca’s mother has pledged to give Bianca a far better education than she herself received – but with bills mounting, she believes the only choices for Bianca are public school or the private school lottery. Daisy dreams of being a veterinarian – she isn’t afraid of the many years of school ahead. Her parents, however, are quietly afraid for Daisy – all the neighborhood schools are tagged “drop out factories” giving Daisy dismal odds of ever graduating, let alone graduating with the needed skills to enter college. They hope the Kipp schools in LA will be a solution. Anthony is a young boy who carries the weight of life like a much older man. With a deceased father and absent mother (both possibly due to drug use), Anthony’s grandmother hopes that he will be selected to get an education at the Seed academy, while Anthony worries about leaving his friends and games behind for a shot at a better education. And Emily lives in an affluent suburb, with million dollar homes and a two parent household. Her problem is less severe than the other children profiled – at her school alone, she will still get a decent education. However, her family is concerned that Emily, who is starting to get lost in the swirl of academics, paper, and homework, will be tracked into regular classes and not receive the attention she needs to stay a solid student.
Along the way, Guggenheim talks to many different educational reformers like Michelle Rhee (the current chancellor of DC Public Schools), Geoffrey Canada of Harlem Children’s Zone, and Bill Gates who testified before congress on the need for more STEM graduates and has undertaken educational reform as part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The film does a wonderful job in painting how dire the entire situation is, and illuminating the realities that face these kids. The results of the lottery tend to reflect life – those who have the least need somehow end up with the best breaks.
Waiting for Superman explored a variety of reasons for student underachievement, and details the current issues facing the nation well. Schools are underfunded, tracking (shifting students into gifted/average/special education classes) is rampant, national standards are spotty, parents are often trying to navigate systems they just do not understand, and bureaucracy tends to win over the best interests of children. But the answers are more elusive. Guggenheim’s ideas rely heavily on charter schools to provide an answer and a way out for some kids. However, even within the film, we see the limitations of charter schools – even with the best case scenario, most of the charter schools do not have the room to accept all the children who need a more challenging curriculum and more involved teachers. And that assumes that the charter school model will work for public schools. However, many charter programs have a provision where if a student is not performing in line with school standards, they can be booted out – back into the public school system. This can create a false impression of the effectiveness of charter schools – after all, if public schools had the option of expelling low performing kids, I am sure their scores would be far higher as well.
Also, the film generally ignores issues of race and class, even when the students or parents bring them up in the course of the film. Many of the parents involved were not big on education when they were young and are generally struggling to make ends meet. Daisy’s father admits he was no good at school and dropped out. Bianca’s mother explains that she didn’t take school seriously until it was too late. And Anthony’s grandmother mentions that she never put much of an emphasis on school, and didn’t really press her children to take education seriously either. She wants the best for Anthony, but these stories show that many parents do not have a clue what type of support their children will need and what type of education they should be receiving. Recently, Essence magazine ran an article on “The Middle Class Achievement Gap,” noting that this isn’t just an issue for low-income families – far too many students are falling behind even when both parents are in the home and dedicated to their children’s education. The article isn’t online, but I typed out a few excerpts for Jezebel:
This logic is deployed often to explain why black boys (never girls, no one is concerned) fall behind academically – but the report in Essence is remarkable because it shows this academic gap is still present within financially stable, two parent homes.
So what’s the problem with Teaneck, New Jersey?
Some experts see the problems as part of shifting societal norms about the role of a parent in education. The article mention how more and more black parents are focusing on extra-curricular supplements to the school system (like foreign language classes, college tours, and family run field trips) to help their children achieve. But the next sentence is telling: “In other words, they are adopting the aggressive, proven strategies for boosting performance that many plugged-in, affluent White parents take on almost as soon as their children are born.”
The parents quoted in the article care deeply about their children and their scholastic future. But many came of age in a time when schooling and education was the responsibility of the teacher and the child, and the parent was there to ensure discipline. Many parents still reflexively defer to the school system and teacher’s decisions, while juggling all other responsibilities.
Essence profiles various parents and their involvement, and the narratives reflect the same shell-shocked feeling when it comes to additional parental responsibilities after enrolling children into school:
Deanna Toler-Kuhney, 49, had a vastly different upbringing. When she was a schoolgirl growing up in the 1960’s, there was a certain rhythm and routine to her education, and for the most part, it didn’t include her parents. “My mom would ask, ‘How was school?’ I would say, ‘Fine,’ says Toler-Kuhney, a mother of three and a project manager in Silver Spring, Maryland. “I did my work and my mom would say, ‘Isn’t it right?’ And that was really it. She didn’t check it. That’s how things were in my family.
Toler-Kuhney changed her tune after seeing district test scores, and seeing how far behind young black children were falling. She and a group of other parents formed a tutoring group, and Toler-Kuhney immediately saw an improvement in her daughter’s test scores. However, as the article notes:
It’s the [...] parent-school partnership Harvard’s Ronald Ferguson insists it is critical if the achievement gap is to be closed. “Parents of color often defer to institutions more than Whites,” he notes. “Even upper-and middle-income parents sometimes will work really hard to move into the best school system in the area, and then watch and wait for the school system to turn their kid into a great student, not understanding that a lot of the work is still theirs.“
Flawed institutions are a major part of why modern schools are failing children in the United States – however, the reformers highlighted in the film have drawn their fair share of controversy. The Harlem Children’s Zone, and their comprehensive programs are generally critiqued on scalability – how well would the HCZ work if they had to accept all children from the surrounding area, including those whose parents can’t or won’t commit. And Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of DC schools, has been dogged by controversy since she took office. Outside of her methods, and reportedly brusque manner with adults (she is far kinder to children), politics once again plays a role in what ultimately happens in DCPS. Rhee has dropped a lot of hints that her tenure as chancellor is dependent on the continued governance of Mayor Fenty, who is facing a potentially tough election.
Ultimately, even as the film ends on a message of hope, stressing involvement and advocacy (with a pledge and a books for kids program), one can’t help but to remember that the majority of the children profiled (3 of 5) were more or less condemned to a subpar education with the roll of a lottery ball. Superman was able to fight the Ku Klux Klan – but it will take far more than a superhero to combat the multitude of issues surrounding educational reform.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
cmd wrote:
Whoah. I live, eat and breathe the inequities of schooling as a teacher and educational researcher, and this film terrifies me. For charter schools to be the primary solution given for the vast issues in our educational system is beyond irresponsible.
A few things:
1. I would urge everyone out there to check out analyses of educational inequity that go beyond the achievement gap. In 2006, educational researcher Gloria Ladson-Billings gave a speech on what she called the ‘educational debt.’ (http://www.aera.net/uploadedFiles/Publications/Journals/Educational_Researcher/3507/02ERv35n7_Ladson-Billings.pdf) Rather than a gap, which puts the onus on children of color to reach a questionable standard, the framing of the educational debt reminds us that schools have never done right by students of color, that the process of desegregation was never realized, and that schools have been systematically underfunded–and are less and less funded based on the number of kids of color in them.
2. Please look at reforms coming from progressive teachers, parents and community groups, not just Geoffrey Canada and Michelle Rhee and charters.
Some exciting parent groups are:
CADRE-LA (http://www.cadre-la.org/)
Coleman Advocates (http://www.colemanadvocates.org/)
Some exciting youth groups are:
Da Town Researchers (http://www.datownresearchers.org/)
Philadelphia Student Union
Some exciting teacher groups are:
Teachers 4 Social Justice SF (www.t4sj.org)
Teachers for Social Justice Chicago (http://www.teachersforjustice.org/)
New York Collective of Radical Educators (www.nycore.org)
Education for Liberation network (http://www.edliberation.org/)
These groups are consistently talking about not only the achievement gap, but ways to improve move away from zero-tolerance discipline, positive (not sanction-based) professional development for teachers, and ways to institutionalize student and parent voice in schools. THESE ARE ALSO STRATEGIES FOR ENDING EDUCATIONAL INEQUITY IN SCHOOLS, AND THEY GET NO MEDIA LOVE.
3. Charter schools are not significantly outperforming regular public schools. Most charters publish their own data, which is questionable, and not compared rigorously to local schools. Stanford recently released the first national study of charters, where they found that “17 percent of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than traditional public schools, while 37 percent of charter schools showed gains that were worse than their traditional public school counterparts, with 46 percent of charter schools demonstrating no significant difference.” http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/National_Release.pdf
4. As a teacher of color, the tendency to pit teachers and parents (specifically White teachers and parents of color) against each other in this story is incredibly dangerous. Some teachers suck, it’s true. But what both teachers and parents are up against are larger forces of race and class inequity in this country. The achievement gap is already 50% present when kids start kindergarten, which suggests that there are forces outside of school that contribute to it; and grows in school, which suggests that forces in school (tracking, racist teachers, poor educational practices) also have something to do with it. But to completely blame teachers with ‘low expectations’ or parents who ‘don’t do enough’ is criminal; and that’s the dichotomy that exists in the mainstream media.
Ok. Just had to get that out…these problems are real, and they are scary. But I’m suspicious of any film that gives Michelle Rhee face time over the teachers and parents who are also in this struggle, and who are offering solutions based on racial justice rather than solutions that result in kids not graduating and teachers getting fired.
Posted 22 Jul 2010 at 11:35 am ¶
Golden Silence wrote:
Was this piece cut off at the end? The last sentence is “Superman was able to fight the Ku Klux Klan – ,” and it cuts off there.
Anyway, I loved this piece and I want to see this film. (I saw a preview for it when I went to see another movie a few weeks back.) It’s telling that the parents of the kids featured didn’t put too much stock into education themselves when they were kids. It’s a never-ending cycle that’s hard, but not completely impossible, to break.
Posted 22 Jul 2010 at 11:41 am ¶
Jesse wrote:
I think one of the interesting facets of the KIPP model (and others) is their extended school day. In some senses, the school is supplanting the parent, making up for the extra after-school attention that students aren’t getting from their parents (for various reasons). In this case, they make it easy for the parent to trust the institution, but it also takes power away from the family unit. It’s an interesting compromise to the flawed-institution problem Latoya highlights here.
Posted 22 Jul 2010 at 12:17 pm ¶
Mildred Lewis wrote:
A terrific piece. I’d like to add a few things to place the observation about not putting too much stock into education into context.
The role of education has changed drastically. It was possible to make it without post high school training for many of these parents. Not today. Not when American students need to be competitive globally. Many American families are getting caught in this transition.
As the stakes for education have risen, the battle for resources has intensified. The Harvard Educational Review had an article that detailed how middle class parents, often white, maneuvered their children into gifted and talented programs, even when those were not the appropriate placements. These efforts are supported by administrators who understandably want to keep some balance in rapidly re-segregating public schools.
Less connected parents aren’t necessarily in the information loop to know what it takes now. Even if they do, they may not have the skills and clout needed to navigate the system.
Let’s not forget the often dismissive treatment of parents: PTA hours held at inopportune times, bureaucratic run around, etc. runs parallel to often dismissive treatment of children in classrooms. Many of us have been in conference or board rooms where our suggestions were ignored, or worse, repeated by someone and celebrated. As an adult, this is frustrating. For children, who hasn’t been given a roadmap or effective coping strategies this can be devastating. How much stock will most people put into any system that treats them shabbily?
Final thoughts. Check out another new doc, The Lottery. It takes a heartbreaking look at a charter school lottery.
Posted 22 Jul 2010 at 12:47 pm ¶
Mike wrote:
I think the point was that while Superman may have been able to fight the Klan, there’s no magic fix or superhero waiting in the wings to come fix our education system.
Posted 22 Jul 2010 at 12:56 pm ¶
Eva wrote:
Sometimes I feel a problem in education today is that every child is pushed towards an academic diploma. What happens to the children who don’t want to go to college? What is there for them?
Posted 22 Jul 2010 at 1:36 pm ¶
Gregory A. Butler wrote:
I do hope people don’t have the illusion that we can achieve social equality through education alone.
The fact is, we live in a capitalist society, where the wealth of the few on top is based on the hard work of the many in the middle – who in turn are better off than those at the bottom who can’t even find a boss to exploit them.
In other words our capitalist society is fundamentally based on inequality – and you have to add to that America’s long history of institutional racism.
American schools reflect the broader social inequality of American society they did not create it!
Even if every American had a college degree, we’d still have a few rich people on top, a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck in the middle, and those at the bottom scraping and struggling to make a dollar out of fifteen cents!
This is not to knock the efforts of education reformers – just to inject a little reality into the discussion.
Posted 22 Jul 2010 at 9:29 pm ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
@Golden Silence –
I fixed it, looks like the last version didn’t save all the way.
@Eva –
For the purposes of this review, I stuck to the premise outlined in the film (prepping kids to complete high school, and eventually head to college) but my own feelings on education are far more complicated. See here:
http://jezebel.com/5336885/are-edupunks-the-cure-to-the-college-cost-crisis
And here:
http://www.theroot.com/views/memo-congress-save-trio?page=0,1
Posted 22 Jul 2010 at 11:56 pm ¶
shemari wrote:
The video was heartbreaking. Kids and parents who want better educational opportunities being at the mercy of a lottery is just tragic.
Personally, I don’t think we’ll ever solve this problem. As Gregory A. Butler stated the inequity in education wasn’t created by the schools but by this capitalist society. We don’t need every adult to be able to dissect and analyze Shakespeare if a significant portion of them will only have available to them jobs paying near the minimum wage. Our poor educational system also helps at election time too. We don’t need too many potential voters who can listen to a politician’s speech or read an news article and see the inconsistencies or downright lies.
However, it’s sad to see the souls of young children crushed by spending years of their lives in a place who purpose is to make the fearful, distrustful, or uninterested in learning.
Posted 23 Jul 2010 at 10:44 am ¶
Howard Chud wrote:
There will never be educational reform as long as we keep doing the same things we are doing. A major paradigm shift is needed away from a model that has existed forever and has not improved by throwing more money at it.
Posted 23 Jul 2010 at 6:56 pm ¶
diana wrote:
It seems extreemly problimatic that the movie ignored race and class considering the purpose of education has not changed since the beginings of compulsory education. Which means that it still functions to reproduce the statis quo by allowing the “cream” to float to the top (a la horace mann in all his meritocracy) and create a whole bunch of docile workers.
Posted 24 Jul 2010 at 4:34 pm ¶
Miles Ellison wrote:
The fact is, the powers-that-be have a vested interest in keeping the public ignorant. Particularly the public that is poor and non-white. The last thing that the political class wants are critical thinkers who know anything.
Posted 24 Jul 2010 at 11:38 pm ¶
ThatDeborahGirl wrote:
Why is everyone so down on charter schools?
I worked at one – it wasn’t perfect but they picked up kids that our local public school district wasn’t educating and didn’t want – but still kept on the rolls to get money for.
Once the kids enrolled in the charter school, the public schools fought them tooth and nail. My question was – why didn’t they fight this hard to educate the kid and keep them in school?
The dirty truth is, public schools count on weeding out a certain amount of kids through disciplanary action. As long as the kids are counted at certain times of year, the school still gets the money for that student but doesn’t have the expense of actually educating that student.
Now, who are the targets for disciplinary action at most schools? Minority kids and poor white kids. Because who gives a damn about them, right?
We need to treat all our children like they’re “cream” and allow them all to “float to the top” of their individual abilities. But it’s ridiculous to blame charter schools for this problem when they’re just one more piece in the education puzzle.
Posted 25 Jul 2010 at 9:25 am ¶