We Need A Hero: Three Things 'Superman' Is Fighting For

Waiting for Superman, the new movie by the team behind the climate-change doc An Inconvenient Truth, is making waves among teachers, parents, and the media for turning a critical eye to the our nation’s education system. The doc has already gotten flack for vilifying teachers unions and touting charter schools as a panacea for education. But anyone who’s seen the movie can tell you that the message is loud, clear, and compelling: whether schools are really in crisis or simply leaving too many kids behind to tolerate any longer, there are some pretty big problems with the way things are going. And something needs to change, now.

Just what’s broken, and how can we fix it? Here are the top three issues the documentary hits on:

1. Tenure and Teachers Unions: Ugly Stepsisters?

Teacher tenure is a policy which gives teachers a permanent contract, effectively ensuring them a guarantee of employment … for life. Teachers that have tenure cannot be fired unless for “just cause”, such as severe misconduct or incompetence. Critics say that teacher tenure makes it virtually impossible to fire bad teachers. Once teachers earn tenure, which, according to a charter school leader quoted in the movie, is as easy as breathing for a few years, getting rid of them can involve years of review and bureaucratic hurdles, and can cost tens of thousands of dollars per teacher.

Teachers unions have a lot to do with negotiating the contracts that mandate tenure, and they don’t come out looking very good in the movie. The efforts of Michelle Rhee, DC Schools Chancellor, to negotiate with the DC teachers union by offering a choice of merit-pay or tenure, were showcased in a positive light. The union’s stonewalling of her compromise? Not so much.

2. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Teacher?

Do we have bad teachers because of tenure, or are we simply too lazy to properly recruit, train, and evaluate the ones we have? According to a recent study conducted by the The New Teacher Project, fewer than 1% of teachers evaluated were found to be unsatisfactory. And yet 81 percent of administrators said there is a tenured teacher in their school who is performing poorly. What gives? Either teacher evaluation methods are outdated, not utilized correctly, or simply not implemented (or all of the above), or school administrators are letting sub-par teachers slip by.

In Waiting for Superman, teachers are identified as both the solution, and the problem. According to one academic, if we replaced the bottom layer of underperforming teachers with “satisfactory,” i.e. “okay” teachers, student achievement would soar past that of Finland, one of the top education nations in the world. A bad teacher can cover as little as 50% of a year’s curriculum with his or her students; a good one, 150%. That’s right: according to the film, the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher is one full year of learning … per year.

The problem is that teachers unions, according to the movie, don’t like to make distinctions between teachers … you know, like “good” and “bad”. Although most every other industry operates according to a meritocracy (do a better job, get paid better), merit-based pay is anathema to the current system, which grants pay increases based on time on the job instead of results.

3. Charter Schools: Our Knights in Shining Armor?

Gymnasiums are full of anxious parents and nail-biting kids. A cage full of bingo balls rotates slowly and spits out a number. A family shouts with joy: Their daughter has been randomly selected to attend a charter school. Others weep in frustration: Their son isn’t one of the lucky ones.

This is a final, emotionally wrenching scene in Waiting for Superman. Daisy wants to be a nurse … or a doctor … or a veterinarian. Anthony, a fifth-grader, is already thinking ahead: He wants his kids to have a better life than he does. Will the children we’ve watched throughout the course of the movie get into the school of their dreams, or be forced to attend their local “drop-out factory”, and risk becoming another statistic of school failure?

Waiting for Superman has been criticized for portraying charter schools as the answer to the problems facing public education. Charter schools, it’s been pointed out, are not more successful than regular public schools (and it’s important to remember that charter schools are still part of the public school system). But some charter schools, such as the KIPP schools, are doing such a monumentally better job at educating children who’ve traditionally been seen as the hardest to school (urban, disadvantaged minority students) that they merit the high profile the film gives them.

The message of the film is this: not every child can get into a good charter school. Not even close. But if we extract what works from successful charter schools and apply them to all schools, every child can, and will, win the lottery.

Photo credit: Xurble