I have been looking forward to watching Waiting For “Superman” since I heard about it and finally got the chance to watch it last night. It was a gut-wrenching movie that takes the situation in our public schools beyond abstract statistics and into the lives of parents and children who are desperate to get into a better school and get out of one of America’s failing public schools. They are mostly younger kids and because of where they live they are on the path to a dropout factory high school if they don’t get into a charter school. Even one young lady in a very nice suburban school is trying to get out because even in an affluent school district, the schools are doing a poor job of preparing all of the students for the economy of the 21st century instead of preparing them for niche jobs as worker bees in the 1950’s. The movie follows these families and intersperses their experiences with interviews of innovative educators who describe the incredible obstacles to trying to reform the school system, most notably the teachers unions that are so politically powerful that they have successfully blocked any sort of real reform for decades.
What is especially heart wrenching is watching auditoriums packed full of parents and kids desperately hoping that their child is selected at random to attend a charter school knowing that if their child doesn’t get picked that they are destined for a much harder road to college. As the names are read off and the kids are not selected, you can see how crushed the children are and perhaps even more so the parents. (spoiler warning!) Ironically the one kid who did get into a charter school is the young woman from California who lives in a neighborhood of million dollar homes and attends one of the nicest looking schools I have ever seen.
It was an interesting juxtaposition that the day we watched Waiting For “Superman”, teachers unions in Wisconsin were encouraging their members to skip work to protest changes to the collective bargaining arrangements in that state and Democratic lawmakers went into hiding to avoid a vote. The public school system is entirely about the entrenched interests and those interests, as the movie points out, are all about the adults and not the kids. That is readily apparent as the movie showed scenes of rooms full of screaming teachers yelling and gesturing at Michelle Rhee of the D.C. public schools for daring to make hard decisions and take a tough stance in the worst public school system in the country.
There are good teachers and there are bad teachers and I think the system wears down good teachers over the years. When you look at the next classroom over and that teacher is putting forth minimal effort and getting paid the same as you, where is your incentive to work harder? What we are left with is an education establishment that I believe has as its goal nothing more than getting as many union members into the educational system and keeping them there no matter what. The good teachers, and there are lots of them, should be rewarded just as high performers in any private organization are rewarded for excellence. They should be allowed to innovate and adapt and they should be encouraged to take risks. The bad teachers should be managed out the door before they can do any more damage. No private organization would survive with the same work rules as a public school (see: Automakers, American). If we are as serious about education in this country as we pay lip service to, we must shatter the monopolistic hold of the public school teachers unions. The teachers unions hold good teachers back and keep bad teachers employed and that is doing nothing to help our kids.
I would highly encourage any parent with a child in the public school system or really anyone who is concerned about the state of American education and what it means for the future of America to watch Waiting For “Superman” .
What is especially heart wrenching is watching auditoriums packed full of parents and kids desperately hoping that their child is selected at random to attend a charter school knowing that if their child doesn’t get picked that they are destined for a much harder road to college. As the names are read off and the kids are not selected, you can see how crushed the children are and perhaps even more so the parents. (spoiler warning!) Ironically the one kid who did get into a charter school is the young woman from California who lives in a neighborhood of million dollar homes and attends one of the nicest looking schools I have ever seen.
It was an interesting juxtaposition that the day we watched Waiting For “Superman”, teachers unions in Wisconsin were encouraging their members to skip work to protest changes to the collective bargaining arrangements in that state and Democratic lawmakers went into hiding to avoid a vote. The public school system is entirely about the entrenched interests and those interests, as the movie points out, are all about the adults and not the kids. That is readily apparent as the movie showed scenes of rooms full of screaming teachers yelling and gesturing at Michelle Rhee of the D.C. public schools for daring to make hard decisions and take a tough stance in the worst public school system in the country.
There are good teachers and there are bad teachers and I think the system wears down good teachers over the years. When you look at the next classroom over and that teacher is putting forth minimal effort and getting paid the same as you, where is your incentive to work harder? What we are left with is an education establishment that I believe has as its goal nothing more than getting as many union members into the educational system and keeping them there no matter what. The good teachers, and there are lots of them, should be rewarded just as high performers in any private organization are rewarded for excellence. They should be allowed to innovate and adapt and they should be encouraged to take risks. The bad teachers should be managed out the door before they can do any more damage. No private organization would survive with the same work rules as a public school (see: Automakers, American). If we are as serious about education in this country as we pay lip service to, we must shatter the monopolistic hold of the public school teachers unions. The teachers unions hold good teachers back and keep bad teachers employed and that is doing nothing to help our kids.
I would highly encourage any parent with a child in the public school system or really anyone who is concerned about the state of American education and what it means for the future of America to watch Waiting For “Superman” .
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