Rated PG for incidental smoking, some thematic material and mild language
Cast: Bianca, Anthony, Daisy, Emily, Francisco, Geoffrey Canada, Michelle Rhee, Randi Weingarten, David Levin, Mike Feinberg, Bill Strickland, Eric Hanushek
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Davis Guggenheim's searing documentary "Waiting for Superman" takes the crisis of education, plucks it from the plinth of knotty socio-political debate--where its enormity often invokes a feeling of surrender--and strips it down into digestible heartbreak. Acquiescence is simply no option.
We're introduced to five young kids from different cities. We hear their stories, learn their ambitions, and feel their pain as they struggle in the nation's underperforming schools. The movie's climax has us bearing witness to a series of "lotteries" to determine whether they will be accepted into various charter schools. It's sort of an anti-climax. Not anti-climactic, mind you. (The scenes are gut-wrenching as all hell.) But as we're watching fate's fickle hand at work, we're taxed with the depressing reality that it shouldn't (and needn't) come down to a roll-of-the-dice to determine one's future.
Interspersed throughout their stories are the perspectives of various administrators, teachers, authors, and so forth, as the film breaks down--to varying degrees--the causes and possible solutions to the problem. The most tangible input comes from Geoffrey Canada, a teacher and administrator whose prescient view of the rapidly-intensifying problem's root cause led to the birth of several highly successful charter schools located throughout the country.
Solutions often come from out-of-the-box thinking, and of course there are those who oppose such approaches, most notably teacher's union president Randi Weingarten. She is shown here not so much in a pointedly negative spotlight, but a narrow one. "We're opposed to anything that divides people and undermines education," she states in response to a radical proposal in regards to tenure. It seems an oddly canned answer with objections that appear, to me anyway, cloudy at best and spurious at worst.
The most polarizing figure, however, is Michelle Rhee, who was appointed by former Washington, DC Mayor Adrian Fenty to the position of chancellor for the city's school system. A fiercely-independent woman with no qualms about introducing the most radical of solutions, Rhee quickly became the target of vitriolic protests from parents, teachers, administrators, and the omnipotent union. One proposed idea in particular was that teachers could choose to surrender their tenure for the chance to earn a larger sum of money through merit pay. It was such a threatening concept to the union that a vote wasn't even afforded. Individuals certainly had their reasons for contesting to the idea. (One of the objections, I think, that people have with merit pay is the notion of who or what determines the "merit.") Although the whole devil-you-know-versus-the-devil-you-don't thing can be a pretty jagged pill to swallow when your child's educational future is on the line.
A lot of people seem ambivalent in regards to Rhee. I don't really have a problem with her for the same reason, I think, that the movie doesn't. Unorthodox approaches need to be, at the very least, acknowledged regardless of what corner they originate. Many questioned Rhee's qualifications, pointing to her lack of experience in administrative duties. But to tackle problems successfully requires the full spectrum of learning and imparting. We need people self-important but also important. Knowledgeable but eager to learn. Strong but empathetic. I don't know if her ideas would have been the most effective, but I think it's unwise to dismiss said ideas based on whether you believe she has the "right" to express them. Opinions are always better debated than suppressed.
The movie gazes into the abyss of various possible causes to the decline, some in more detail than others. At one point, Guggenheim points out that part of the problem is something referred to as "The Blob". It's when the federal government offers funding to schools based upon their own guidelines, yet individual states have their own guidelines as well, which muddies up the works and impacts how schools are funded. Yet the film curiously doesn't go into greater detail on the machinations of this monetary quagmire.
The most powerful sentiment that the movie offers is that ideas to fix the problem often lie near our doorstep but we need the cognizance and determination to take hold of those ideas, shape them, mold them, and reapply them in various ways. Too often, the film argues, we rest at the mercy of theorists who dish out rhetoric on why certain approaches--while offering up morsels of hope--will never be totally effective in the long run. Success stories like the charter schools started by Geoffrey Canada weren't brought about through rumination over how they might factor into the "long run." He saw an approach that he thought could have an impact, and implemented it at the grassroots level.
Guggenheim draws an interesting parallel to when pilot and astronaut Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. Theorists claimed it couldn't be done. That the aircraft wouldn't be able to sustain the pressure... would disintegrate. Many pilots, as a result, stayed grounded rather than attempting the feat. We're shown a clip from an interview with Yeager, where he doesn't come off as some kind of mythic superhero who stared in the face of danger and laughed. "I heard what the theorists said. I just didn't see it that way," he stated in a refreshingly matter-of-fact way.
The movie argues the same thing. The title doesn't reflect the answer, but the fallacy. The solution needn't come from fictional heroics, the heavens, or some kind of deus ex machina. Rather, it must be bred from intelligence, compassion, determination, a little out-of-the-box thinking, and from those who can stare into the cyclonic core of a problem as it demands surrender and say... I just don't see it that way.
* * * 1/2 out of * * * * stars
We're introduced to five young kids from different cities. We hear their stories, learn their ambitions, and feel their pain as they struggle in the nation's underperforming schools. The movie's climax has us bearing witness to a series of "lotteries" to determine whether they will be accepted into various charter schools. It's sort of an anti-climax. Not anti-climactic, mind you. (The scenes are gut-wrenching as all hell.) But as we're watching fate's fickle hand at work, we're taxed with the depressing reality that it shouldn't (and needn't) come down to a roll-of-the-dice to determine one's future.
Interspersed throughout their stories are the perspectives of various administrators, teachers, authors, and so forth, as the film breaks down--to varying degrees--the causes and possible solutions to the problem. The most tangible input comes from Geoffrey Canada, a teacher and administrator whose prescient view of the rapidly-intensifying problem's root cause led to the birth of several highly successful charter schools located throughout the country.
Solutions often come from out-of-the-box thinking, and of course there are those who oppose such approaches, most notably teacher's union president Randi Weingarten. She is shown here not so much in a pointedly negative spotlight, but a narrow one. "We're opposed to anything that divides people and undermines education," she states in response to a radical proposal in regards to tenure. It seems an oddly canned answer with objections that appear, to me anyway, cloudy at best and spurious at worst.
The most polarizing figure, however, is Michelle Rhee, who was appointed by former Washington, DC Mayor Adrian Fenty to the position of chancellor for the city's school system. A fiercely-independent woman with no qualms about introducing the most radical of solutions, Rhee quickly became the target of vitriolic protests from parents, teachers, administrators, and the omnipotent union. One proposed idea in particular was that teachers could choose to surrender their tenure for the chance to earn a larger sum of money through merit pay. It was such a threatening concept to the union that a vote wasn't even afforded. Individuals certainly had their reasons for contesting to the idea. (One of the objections, I think, that people have with merit pay is the notion of who or what determines the "merit.") Although the whole devil-you-know-versus-the-devil-you-don't thing can be a pretty jagged pill to swallow when your child's educational future is on the line.
A lot of people seem ambivalent in regards to Rhee. I don't really have a problem with her for the same reason, I think, that the movie doesn't. Unorthodox approaches need to be, at the very least, acknowledged regardless of what corner they originate. Many questioned Rhee's qualifications, pointing to her lack of experience in administrative duties. But to tackle problems successfully requires the full spectrum of learning and imparting. We need people self-important but also important. Knowledgeable but eager to learn. Strong but empathetic. I don't know if her ideas would have been the most effective, but I think it's unwise to dismiss said ideas based on whether you believe she has the "right" to express them. Opinions are always better debated than suppressed.
The movie gazes into the abyss of various possible causes to the decline, some in more detail than others. At one point, Guggenheim points out that part of the problem is something referred to as "The Blob". It's when the federal government offers funding to schools based upon their own guidelines, yet individual states have their own guidelines as well, which muddies up the works and impacts how schools are funded. Yet the film curiously doesn't go into greater detail on the machinations of this monetary quagmire.
The most powerful sentiment that the movie offers is that ideas to fix the problem often lie near our doorstep but we need the cognizance and determination to take hold of those ideas, shape them, mold them, and reapply them in various ways. Too often, the film argues, we rest at the mercy of theorists who dish out rhetoric on why certain approaches--while offering up morsels of hope--will never be totally effective in the long run. Success stories like the charter schools started by Geoffrey Canada weren't brought about through rumination over how they might factor into the "long run." He saw an approach that he thought could have an impact, and implemented it at the grassroots level.
Guggenheim draws an interesting parallel to when pilot and astronaut Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. Theorists claimed it couldn't be done. That the aircraft wouldn't be able to sustain the pressure... would disintegrate. Many pilots, as a result, stayed grounded rather than attempting the feat. We're shown a clip from an interview with Yeager, where he doesn't come off as some kind of mythic superhero who stared in the face of danger and laughed. "I heard what the theorists said. I just didn't see it that way," he stated in a refreshingly matter-of-fact way.
The movie argues the same thing. The title doesn't reflect the answer, but the fallacy. The solution needn't come from fictional heroics, the heavens, or some kind of deus ex machina. Rather, it must be bred from intelligence, compassion, determination, a little out-of-the-box thinking, and from those who can stare into the cyclonic core of a problem as it demands surrender and say... I just don't see it that way.
* * * 1/2 out of * * * * stars
