A Teacher Grades “Waiting for Superman” Documentary

The documentary “Waiting for Superman” was released when I was beginning my college courses to become a teacher. I had previously earned a Master’s in Public Administration and was returning to college to become certified as a secondary (grades 8-12) social studies teacher. It was autumn 2010 and years of No Child Left Behind legislation, passed under former president George W. Bush, had yet to turn around America’s lagging standardized test and high school graduation statistics. The public was, and still is, upset. I did not watch the documentary.

Now it is Spring Break for my school district. I am a second-year teacher, teaching regular and Advanced Placement Economics at a 5A high school, the largest size in the state ranking hierarchy, in west Texas. I have 69 students in three regular Economics classes and 39 students in three Advanced Placement Economics classes. My district struggles in state rankings but is centered around a relatively affluent small city. The school has had modern renovations and I teach in a spacious wing that was completed after 2005. My largest class has fewer than 30 students on any given day. These facts will undoubtedly influence my review of the documentary.

The good:

Production value is high. The documentary is well done and looks professional. Sound is good and visuals are potent and well-timed. The film is easy to watch.

Statistics and issues are explained well. “Waiting for Superman” uses animated explanations to good effect, quickly revealing problems facing U.S. states in regard to education statistics. A layman watching the documentary will quickly come to understand the basic stuggles in American public education, particularly in urban areas.

Despite controversy, the documentary has positive messages. Most importantly, the film does a good job imparting confidence that all students can learn.

The bad:

The documentary fails to explain how to fix problems. “Waiting for Superman” excels at explaining the problems but falls woefully short at revealing meaningful fixes. America has many millions of students to educate, and the few high-performing charter schools and programs discussed in the documentary are unlikely to solve the problems at the macro level, at least at any reasonable cost.

In regard to the focus on charter schools, the documentary fails to address the possibility that these charter schools may be so much more successful than public “dropout factories” because of exponentially increased parental involvement of students seeking to attend charter schools. This unfairly places blame on “dropout factory” teachers, who are often accused of poor performance without any mention of community or parental apathy. As a teacher, I can attest to the negative power of parental apathy.

The documentary takes on public school teachers too aggressively. While many public school teachers may be low-performing and be too protected by tenure, the documentary paints all teachers’ unions with a broad brush. Those supporting K-12 teacher tenure are portrayed as encouraging educator laziness. Additionally, the description of K-12 teaching tenure may not be realistic for many, or even most, school districts: As a teacher I certainly do not feel that I keep my job my simply “continuing to breathe,” as is suggested by one of the featured education reformers. My performance is frequently assessed by supervisors and teachers are closely watched. Saying that public school teachers can keep their jobs by “continuing to breathe” is rather insulting to teachers.

The mixed:

Unrelenting focus on attending college may not fix America’s education problems. In fact, with a trillion-dollar college loan bubble, is it advisable to blindly bleat that everyone must attend college? The documentary’s focus on “we need to improve education so everyone can attend college” instead of “we need to improve education so everyone can graduate high school” could be seen as a lobbying effort for America’s bloated and financially inefficient higher education system. A documentary on how to improve K-12 public education need not worry about focusing on higher education – doing so only complicates the issue.

The documentary focuses heavily on elementary education instead of high school education. This could be in order to heighten the drama and make the images more palatable; all the elementary school students in the documentary smiled and talked about how much they loved school and wanted to go to college. Would “Waiting for Superman” have been as potent if high school students, many showing teen apathy or disrespect, were shown and/or interviewed? As a result of focusing heavily on elementary education, the documentary could be seen as oversimplifying the difficulties of K-12 education. Nevertheless, doing so may have been necessary for the sake of the documentary’s message.

The verdict:

The documentary is a good watch but overly simplistic. It should be shown to incoming College of Education students to highlight education reform issues, and may also be shown to high school and college students to highlight issues pertaining to education, government, and government spending, such as in a Government or Economics class. It should not be used as a comprehensive explanation of education issues, but may be used as a brief overview. For higher-performing high school and college students it could be used to help formulate formal debates about education reform and public-sector spending.