Failing Public Schools? A Film Critique of Waiting For Superman

Failing Public Schools? A Film Critique of Waiting For Superman

Waiting For Superman is a documentary by Davis Guggenheim in which the failure of public school system was analyzed through the lenses of students, parents and various education experts and reformers.[1] Guggenheim touched on variegated issues of controversy such as lower performance, dropout factories, administrative bureaucracy, achievement gap, teacher union and tenure, tracking and alternative schooling like charter and magnet school. Stories of five children and their families as they struggle their way into good public schools run through the documentary, while remarks from educator Geoffrey Canada, chancellor Michelle Rhee, editor Jonathan Alter, Bill Gates and other celebrities weaved in. The documentary depicts some dire situations in public education with lively stories and expressive images. In this paper I will thread the underlying theory and frame my analysis around two scenes that display some most frustrating moments in the movie; the dilemma often suggests the complex and challenging nature of the problem, which made further study and reform an imperative.

Scene 1: Announcing the Lottery Results

At the end of the movie, Guggenheim spent approximately twenty minutes in length portraying the scenes where results of lottery into good public schools were announced. The camera swept over many faces of children and their families – faces of angst and anticipation, of disappointment and loss, of innocence and helplessness, of the tears and the occasional laughter. On the bottom right of the screen, the number of applicants and available spots are being counted down: Harlem Success Academy with 40 openings yet 792 families applying; KIPP Prep with 10 spots but 135 applications. As the number kept going down, the tension and feelings of defeat in the crowd kept building on. Out of the five protagonist children only Emily got her wish come true; Anthony, Daisy, Francisco and Bianca were all rejected admission into schools of their choice. This is perhaps one of the most compelling and striking scenes throughout the documentary; it becomes a scourging criticism and an outright mockery at the school system. The bargains on the gambling table are the children’s rights of a decent education, their keys to career options and their opportunities to future success. The director eventually employed a dramatic reversal scene: because of a newly added space Anthony managed to get into Seed, an urban boarding school in DC, leaving viewers with a tinge of bittersweet hope.

The pivotal message expressed in the movie attributes US students’ poor performance to a dominant broken public school system where students are left with very few choices and their futures in the hands of luck. To prove his point, the director first compiled lists of statistical results to demonstrate that despite ambitious targets and efforts, students in the United States are continuing to lag behind in math and reading comprehension compared with those in other developed countries. Then the model of ‘Dropout Factories’, proposed by Dr. Robert Balfanz from John Hopkins University to describe schools with 60 percent or fewer of entering freshman who progress to senior year[2], was raised to explain how the bottom public schools have failed the students in their education paths. For instance, of the 60,000 students in Locke High School in Los Angeles for the past 40 years, up to 40,000 students (67%) failed to graduate on time; in Roosevelt High School, only 3 percent of students graduated with qualifications for admission into a 4-year university whereas the graduation rate for middle school falls at merely 25%. The consequences of students dropping out are severe, especially for those already living in troubled homes and plagued neighborhoods. According to the narration, of areas in Harlem where poverty and crime struck most, “more kids knew people who had been to prison than had gone to college.” Thus it becomes harder for children to look up for role models if forced out of schooling. Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot public schools, also pointed out that kids deficient in learning and pushed through the public school system often end up as dropout teens on streets; he believes that schools have not only foundered in their responsibility to educate the disadvantaged but even done damage to its surrounding community. The dropout pattern may support that public school failures contribute to the achievement gap – Canada noticed that minority children tend to fall behind on the fourth to sixth grades due to the system’s inherent flaw.

Barr and Guggenheim are making strong accusations from a reformer’s perspective, perhaps too strong to disguise the complication of the reciprocal interaction between the neighborhood and its public education locus. Some readings in class also emphasize a similar mindset in that the parental environment should not take the blame for student failure and that the culture of schooling can be reshaped to reduce the achievement gap.[3] Nevertheless, we know in reality that schooling and neighborhood influence each other. Public school cannot and should not take the full responsibility for the vitalization of a neighborhood - as other social inequities in housing, health care, and income much perplexed the division - but impoverished communities do need a good school even more. Education can serve as the powerful engine to bring people hope and opportunity or a great equalizer ensuring healthy social mobility; some public schools, to the contrary, exacerbate the achievement gap and deprive children opportunities to succeed. The worries and prayers of Anthony’s grandmother have real roots: if in a bad school environment or being forced to drop out, Anthony can easily be “influenced to do things that he shouldn’t” with little positive influence in life.

In a nutshell, as resources of good public schools are rare and much needed, lottery was installed and luck namely becomes the sole determinant in a child’s education route and there is no guarantee that his or her future will not be at stake. The stories of the children in the documentary tugged at my heartstrings. Despite my happiness for Anthony’s lucky entry into Seed, I also acknowledge that it did not solve the real problem – it could not save all the other children who unfortunately did not make it onto the list. I wonder what schooling options they have at hand and how they will continue their education without enough support. It does not matter who wins or who loses - if right to good education becomes so expensive a prize of a lottery, collectively we all lose. So though the director did not completely explicate why public education is to blame and how it can empower youths and communities if done properly, the phenomenon described is still powerfully persuasive and the lottery trap is still one of the strongest messages delivered by the movie.

To further layer out some problems present in American public school system, I procured a threading punishment mentality from my observations and readings of measures taken on both the municipal and school administrative level, as seen in the NCLB act, the high drop-out rate and the tracking system. The No Child Left Behind Act carried out by Bush Administration, for example, contends that the old-line “public schools cannot merely be reformed” and a discipline-and-punish regimen of “strict accountability” should be in place.[4] As a result, schools in most need of help will have budget cut or be shuttered totally. Likewise for those students who made mistakes and need educational support most, the only option seems to be pushed out of the school system at the mercy of societal pressure. The tracking system similarly place students already with a disadvantage onto tracks with less resources and attention; tracking would ideally work if teaching resources abound and differentiated study can be afforded – however, in the settings of the beleaguered urban education, tracking only aggravates the gap in learning capacity.

These solutions were already deemed ineffective in the documentary. Nonetheless, some resolutions and rationale anchored by Guggenheim himself are problematic in nature as well. It lionizes charter schools as the solution to the current public education problems without disclosing any of their defects. A national study by CREDO at Stanford concludes that only 17% of charters perform better in testing than traditional public schools while only about one fifth of charter schools are delivering good results.[5] However, charters were continuously glorified as the success examples in the film yet how and why they are successful as compared to other institutions were entirely omitted from the conversation. The push-back on charter school movement reflect the concern that charters are competing with traditional public schools for resources therefore reduce the space and capacity available for other schools.[6] The remarks from Canada we read in class held a counterargument.[7] Due to the limited number of existing charter schools, he maintains that charters are not a threat; neither are they a panacea. In my opinion, charter schools should not be considered a separate system from public schooling and corporate reform or privatization cannot deal with education of the masses. Yet charter schools certainly did not cause the problems in the public school system, which were vividly manifested by the struggling stories told in the documentary. Since charter school receive public funding, they should be treated the same way as other public schools and readily publish results to help educators research on what made some charters excel and some others crumple. If indeed funding was the drive for the better performance, a better funding formula shooting for larger financial support should be campaigned for; if innovative pedagogies are the secret, the curriculum could be shared and replicated elsewhere. Additionally, laws regulating and limiting the private investors should be passed to protect the integrity and the operation of the public education framework.

The documentary uses standardized testing results almost as the sole criterion in measuring student achievement and performance. I concur that test scores statistics is practically handy in analyzing large student populations and the numbers in the documentary point out certain systematic loopholes; however, it is also important to acknowledge that the testing scores do not represent the full picture. Using testing scores as measurement also significantly limit the scope of the lenses; subjects such as math, science and engineering are heavily weighed in while literature, arts, humanities and social studies are neglected and sliced aside. Not just the solutions proposed in the movie brought about much debate but that the causes of the problem are arguably also a controversial piece, which will be further confronted later in the paper.

Scene 2: No Voting – Michele Rhee’s Proposal Rejected Altogether

The failure of Chancellor Michele Rhee’s proposition marked another impediment to change epitomized by the film. Rhee proposed a radical change in the D.C. school district to give teachers a choice between keeping tenure with modest pay and dropping tenure but with a potential large merit-based increase in salary. So threatened was the National Teacher’s Union that the local union leadership did not even allow voting to happen, for fear of dividing the teacher group. The teacher’s union was presented as the starch defender of the status quo; “It all becomes about the adults” was Rhee’s frustrating comment on the situation.

Though I do not believe teachers should be scapegoated as the sole source of problems in public education, such a relatively mild reform to better reward teachers based on merit was denied totally the chance of voting and experimentation illustrates how bureaucracy may hinder progress in educational reform. The film helped me more critically examine teacher union, school district administration and the various political leverages and dynamics in play. Editor Jonathan Alter referred to the many types of governance with conflicting agendas across the federal, state and school levels “The Blob”; collectively they become the barrier to reform and the “Goliath” of the system. If we accept that good teachers and bad teachers make a big difference in students’ growth - as shown in the film by Eric Hanushek’s statistical measurement - then a system of eliminating bad teachers and rewarding good teachers become a necessity. However, according to the documentary the current bureaucratic system neither allows for firing unqualified teachers nor rewards teachers appropriately because of a provision written in the teacher’s contract called “tenure” that guarantees them jobs for life. Superintendent Howard Fuller gave one extreme example in which he could not even fire a teacher who put a student’s head in toilet bowl. The “dance of lemons” metaphorically described the phenomenon that bad teachers often simply “danced” from district to district since union contract protect them from being fired.[8] In New York, again shockingly, some of these problematic teachers are put into reassignment center called Rubber Room - where they spent seven hours a day playing cards - whilst teachers with better performance cannot be recognized and paid more under current contract.

The film then gives us a good peek into the coherent yet difficult reality of school reform – it often involves bargaining, coordination and struggle among many different interest parties. The teacher union, for example, was initiated to protect teachers from low payment and biased evaluation; it makes sense that they argue more on behalf of the teacher interest. Even if Rhee’s proposal could go on to the next stage, many executional problems will also arise. The narration in the movie says, “You can’t have a great school without great teachers”. As forcible as the quote may sound, no one knows for sure how to measure and evaluate good teachers fairly? How do we assess without arbitrary subjective decisions and pitfalls of over-generalization and simplification by merely testing scores? Rhee stressed many times “accountability” and “producing results for kids” - does this not sound familiar? It follows the same paradigm as in some of the earlier discourse on the punishment mentality. Like many of her precedents, Rhee set out to tear up the district and change the “face of public education”; in October 2010, however, she also had to resign before her term expired, like her ambitious forerunners. Reformers come and go, each time leaving schools, teachers and students agitated, unsure and perhaps puzzled, waiting for the next round of super change to take place, or not to happen.

A good documentary is not expected to present solutions; sometimes it brings about more questions than answers. Waiting for Superman is effective by this measure as it layers out the complexity of the public school system with rich and vivid visuals; the stories of the children are also especially captivating. Director Guggenheim carefully chose whom to appear in front of the camera. Four out of the five student heroes are people of color: the African American boy Anthony who lost his father and lived with his grandma; the Latino girl Daisy whose dad was unemployed and whose mom worked as cleaner in hospital; the African American boy Francisco from a family with multiple children and Bianca, whose mother lost her job and took on much work to support her into the Catholic school - they represent the underprivileged minorities. The only white student Emily lived in a wealthy suburb and became a reference point to the other four; she also suffered from the scarcity of good schooling. The major two education reformers depicted here, Canada and Rhee, respectively represented grassroots and governmental remedies to the current system. From the education analysis lenses, the documentary centers on public education, using rich data, stories, interviews and cartoons to demonstrate the severity of the problem, the causes and their rationale as well as possible solutions.

Besides my critiques on the assessing methodologies, the proposed causes and the solutions, the documentary also misses a major perspective from the teachers and the teacher union. After the movie was screened for public, Randi Weingarten, president of American Federation of Teachers warned that “Do not let teachers become the scapegoats and only blame one part of the system”.[9] Roekel, President of National Edu Assoc. critiqued that “Nowhere in the film or its discussion have teachers voices been heard” and that “If you want to know how to make a public school great, ask a teacher, not Hollywood.” It was true that Guggenheim sensationalized the difficulty of school reform while neglecting the plighted living realities of many teachers. Protecting children’s rights to education does not mean negligence of teacher rights or that students and their parents do not engage in hard efforts; while the director incisively lambasted the politics and the system, the documentary missed an important cultural critique, guising some larger social equality issues.

Some people may further contend that Waiting For Superman avoids the possibility of reforming public schools’ inherent problems and attempts to merely turn them into privatized charter machines. I would argue, however, that the director also identifies the limitation - at least in terms of number – of these alternative schooling options. Since public schools are still where the majority of American kids attend, most reforms should still set out to address problems inherent in public education itself, making public schools truly the choice of the public. And if we make the public schools so good and affordable that children of all different backgrounds will all choose to attend, public schools will really become the engine fueling the social mixing and mobility. The idea of a paramount public education is not a fantasy; as supported by the movie, historically until the 1970s, public schools are the ideal path to success, producing many Nobel prize winders, politicians and numerous other great people. The message I got out of Waiting For Superman is that the superman savior does not exist; there are simply no quick fixes. If we are to change the status quo, we have only ourselves to rely on. I will use the quotes at the end of the movie to end my paper:

“Great school won’t come from winning the lottery.

They won’t come from superman.

They will come from you.