A Review of “Waiting for Superman”

A Review of “Waiting for Superman”

Waiting for Superman, the “documentary” film by Davis Guggenheim, has been released in New Zealand after generating a good deal of publicity in the USA. Guggenheim was the director of “An Inconvenient Truth”, the film on global warming, which won the academy award for Best Documentary Feature in 2007.

American education researcher, Diane Ravitch, reviewed the film for the New York Review of Books and her review is available at:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov11/myth-charter-schools/

Her introductory remarks are as follows:

“The message of these films [including The Cartel and The Lottery] has become alarmingly familiar: American public education is a failed enterprise. The problem is not money. Public schools already spend too much. Test scores are low because there are so many bad teachers, whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. Students drop out because the schools fail them, but they could accomplish practically anything if they were saved from bad teachers. They would get higher test scores if schools could fire more bad teachers and pay more to good ones. The only hope for the future of our society, especially for poor black and Hispanic children, is escape from public schools, especially to charter schools, which are mostly funded by the government but controlled by private organizations, many of them operating to make a profit.”

To get these messages across, the film spends a lot of time following five children, all beautiful, charming and heart warming, who enter a lottery to win a place in a charter school. We hear from them, their distraught parents and grandparents, talking about how dreadful their schools are, how children hate going to school and know they’ll never succeed. They are all convinced that getting into a private or charter school is their only chance of getting into college, getting a decent job and having any chance of leading a good life. At the end of the film, we share the drama of the live lottery- style draws, as the rules of charter schools dictate that random, public drawings must be held.

While most reviews of the film are sympathetic to the cause, driven in large part by the emotional pull of the plight of the children concerned, there are several other critical reviews.

Locally, Matthew Turner, of the ViewAuckland Review, gave it 3 stars out of 5 and also noted: “Well made, well-intentioned documentary that takes a disturbing yet necessary look at America’s public school system, though the conclusions reached are pretty depressing and the film resorts to some shameless emotional manipulation in the final scenes.”

Sukhdev Sandhu of The Telegraph UK, sums it up as follows: “In the end, this is scattergun film-making, well-intentioned but sloppy, sometimes deliberately evasive. If this documentary were an exam essay, I’d fail it.”

There are several notable points about the film that are of concern, to those genuinely interested in education. One major point is the film’s quiet acknowledgement that only one in five charter schools is able to get the “amazing results” that it celebrates. But nothing more is said about this astonishing statistic. The film completely ignores the fact that a large number of charter schools are no better, on average, than public schools. A major study of charter schools by Margaret Raymond, of Stanford University, revealed that only 17% of charter schools were superior to a matched traditional public school; 37% were worse than the public school; and the remaining 46% had academic gains no different from that of a similar public school. The proportion of charters that get “amazing” results is far smaller than 17%, according to Ravitch. The propagandist nature of the film is also revealed by the complete failure to even attempt to look at the many fine public schools that achieve good results for their students.

There is also a serious distortion of the facts in how reading and maths achievement results are portrayed in the film. The film claims that 70% of 8th grade students cannot read at grade level. Guggenheim asserts this in the film by assuming that any student below “Proficient” is “below grade level”. He bases this claim on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test data. But NAEP doesn’t measure performance in terms of grade-level achievement.

Diane Ravitch points out that being “proficient” is akin to achieving quite a high grade in these tests, where the grades are Advanced, Proficient and Basic. Proficient is equivalent to an A or very strong B, while Basic equates to a clear pass – around a C grade. So a low percentage of students being “Proficient” is not an indicator of poor achievement, as the film clearly attempts to portray. Only those who fail to be rated as Basic, or higher, are the real underachievers. Ravitch suggests this is closer to 25% than the 70% highlighted in the film.

It may well be that the lack of accuracy in the film may have been a contributing factor as to why the film was not even nominated in this year’s Academy Awards.

But the really important questions that this film raises remained unanswered. Why do so many students fail to achieve in American public schools? What are the real causes?

The education reformers are convinced that they “know what works” in public education. Guggenheim places a lot of emphasis on bad teachers and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, is clearly cast as the villain of the film.

But do we really know what works and what doesn’t? Are charter schools really the answer?

The film ignores the impact of factors outside the control of schools, such as poverty or absent parents. But do failing schools create failing neighbourhoods or is it the other way around? Can educators fix all the problems in society?

Ravitch has argued strongly in her book, “The Death and Life of the American Public School System”, that testing and “choice”, as she describes the charter movement, are undermining the quality of American education. She also reminds us, in her review of the film, that there is a clash of ideas occurring in education right now between those who believe that public education is not only a fundamental right but a vital public service and those who believe that the private sector is always superior to the public sector. Waiting for Superman is a powerful weapon on behalf of those championing the “free market” and privatization.

A brief review of the film, by ACT Party Education spokesperson, Sir Roger Douglas, is posted on the ACT Party website:

http://www.act.org.nz/blog/roger-douglas/waiting-for-superman-1

“The denial of a child a good education is to trap that child into poverty. We need to admit to ourselves that the current system is failing our children. Only then can we look for other options. I strongly suggest that you watch this film and reflect on the parallels with New Zealand.”

Yes, Sir Roger, but what are the parallels and what are the key differences between the US and New Zealand education systems?

One parallel is the increasing level of inequality in our two societies. According to figures released by the OECD, income inequality has risen in both countries since the mid-1980s, when most Western economies embarked on a period of significant economic reform:

“The United States is the country with the highest inequality level and poverty rate across the OECD, Mexico and Turkey excepted. Since 2000, income inequality has increased rapidly, continuing a long-term trend that goes back to the 1970s.”

“Inequality in New Zealand has fallen since 2000, reversing a long-term trend, but is still well above the OECD average. On the other hand poverty (meaning people who live on less than half the median income) has risen since 2000, and is now at the OECD average.”

Source: “Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries”, October 2008.

But one major difference is the level of student achievement in the New Zealand system is far superior to that of the United States. In the 2009 PISA tests of our 15-year old students, New Zealand was placed 7th, 13th and 7th in Reading, Maths and Science out of the 65 education systems that participated. The comparable placings for the USA were 17th, 31st and 23rd.

In summary, this film will provide ammunition for the school reform / privatisation movement but it will be interesting to see what traction it gains in New Zealand. A small minority, such as ACT Party supporters, are likely to use it to further their arguments for reform policies such as more government funding for independent schools and the introduction of vouchers.

But I believe most New Zealanders who view the film will walk away and think, “Thank God our system is not like America’s.” And long may it stay that way.

The New Zealand system is under threat from recent moves such as the introduction of National Standards and the growing influence of business thought processes and “managing by numbers”. There is much to be done to re-open the debate around education and develop policies that genuinely enhance an already world class system and improve the educational outcomes of all students.

Bill Courtney

ends

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