Finally
"Waiting for Superman" is a brand-new documentary that is set to hit theaters in New York and Los Angeles on September 24 and nationwide later. It is made by the same filmmaker Davis Guggenheim who is best known for making "An Inconvenient Truth" about global warming. My reaction to this documentary being released and going mainstream is: it is about time.
“Superman” affectingly, movingly traces the stories of five children—all but one of them poor and black or Hispanic—and their parents as they seek to secure a decent education by gaining admission via lottery to high-performing charter schools. At the same time, the film is a withering indictment of the adults—in particular, those at the teachers unions—who have let the public-school system rot, and a boon to reformers such as Geoffrey Canada and Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools, who has waged an epic campaign to overhaul the notoriously dysfunctional system over which she presides.
We have to rethink the way we look, think, and act on education in this country. Hopefully, this documentary will impact policy and the national dialogue and kitchen tables as much as "The Inconvenient Truth" has.
The Facts
9, 13, 17 year old children who take the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the most reliable test for progress, found the following:
- Average Reading Test in 1971: 285
- Average Reading Test in 2008: 286
- Average Math Test in 1973: 304
- Average Math Test in 2008: 306
- Mathematics: ranked 35th out of 57 developing countries
- Science: ranked 29th out of 57 developing countries
- From 1960 to 1995, public spending per pupil increased 212%
- Since the 1970s, federal spending per student has doubled.
- Tied with Switzerland for highest per pupil expenditures at $11,000.
- Spending went up 40% alone during the Bush Administration
- By 1995, the less than half of U.S. public school employees were teachers!
- In 1955, student teacher ratio was 27:1
- In 2008, student teacher ratio was 15:1
- Student population increase is 8%
- Teacher allotment increase is 61%
- In 2008, the average teacher received $53,230. Two teachers married to each other would qualify in the top 20% of wage earning households in this country.
This is a crisis. Most people that I know, including myself, grew up in affluent areas with relatively positive experiences in public schools. The reality is that for many people in less affluent areas, the public school experience is dreadful. In the Schott Report, it found that 47% of African American students graduate from high school. After all the money we throw at education, something is wrong.
We need to change the way we do education, radically. Unfortunately, we cannot do that until the general public is aware of the pervasiveness of this problem and chooses to not accept the status quo. In my opinion, school choice attacks the status quo, and radically alters the direction of the lives of children (here is my previous blog on school choice).
For kids in the most troubling areas for schools in this country, their only hope for a quality education is that their number is called in a lottery that can send them to a high performing charter school. Otherwise, they are condemned to the failing school around the corner or in their neighborhood by the government monopoly of education. This is the elephant in the room. That is why "Waiting for Superman" is going to be so revealing. Because for most of these disadvantaged kids, the best chance for their success in life is hoping Superman comes.
Blake
5 comments:
I agree with this but only a certain percent of a child's education, or lack there of, can be blamed on the government or school systems. Parents of young children should take responsibilities into their own hands if the public school system isn't doing enough. Also, children should step up to the plate and go get their education if they want one... This is America... if you want something, go get it. Finally like Daddy says, "you can lead a horse to water but you cain't make it drink" or if a child doesn't have the ambition to learn then teachers, principles, or even the president cant force them to.
I agree with you JNC. Parents, and especially fathers, are the primary people responsible for the education of their children. The Bible is clear in this as well:
Ephesians 6:4--Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
That is why I am such an advocate for school choice because it gives the education of a child back into the control of parents. It is heartbreaking and against common sense to force hundreds of thousands of children to attend failing schools just because the live in the block or in this district. A parent has no choice--other than send them to a private school. Those that are not affluent cannot afford to send their kids to private schools so they are forced by the government monopoly on schools to send them to the district school.
I agree with you that "parents of young children should take responsibilities into their own hands if the public school system isn't doing enough." But because of the the way our educational structure is set up, they do not have the ability to unless they do private or homeschool.
We need to rethink education.. not to take away from the parents role but to empower them more.
Talking about the public education system and government spending, Ron Paul brings up an important point. The point he makes is that the public education system is nothing but a giant employment agency full of bureaucrats. Below is an exert from his book "The Revolution: A Manifesto."
"To get an appreciation for the difference between public and private administration in terms of bureaucracy and cost-effectiveness, consider this. The Brookings Institutions's John Chubb once investigated the number of bureaucrats working in the central administration offices of the New York City public schools. Six telephone calls finally yielded someone who knew the answer, but that person was not allowed to disclose it. Another six calls later, Chubb had at last pinned down someone who knew the answer and could tell him what it was: there were 6,000 bureaucrats working in the central office.
Then Chubb called the Archdiocese of New York, to find out the figure there. (The city's Catholic schools educated one-fifth as many students as did the government-run schools.) Chubb's first telephone call was taken by someone who did not know the answer. Here we go again, he thought. But after a moment she said, "Wait a minute, let me count." Her answer: 26."
The efficiency of government amazes me.
Looking back, an intersting persperpective from the National Review in 2001:
cato.org/research/education/articles/reagan.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703709804575202310888043490.html
That's a good post Brett. I actually almost posted the above article in the blog post. Florida is leading the way and is saving money by providing school choice to these needy families. This is the type of out of the box and decentralized type of action that will shift the balance of power. Instead of the time tested failure of just giving agencies more money.
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