Educators Take Issue With 'Waiting for Superman'

At the beginning of Waiting for Superman we meet Anthony, a fifth-grader from one of the lowest performing schools in Washington, D.C. Anthony, who lives with his grandparents, is smart and thoughtful but has struggled in school. He was held back in second grade, he says, "because my father had passed….He took drugs." His future doesn't look much better–he's on track to attend John Philip Sousa middle school, which has been called an "academic sinkhole."

Anthony is one of five students featured in Davis Guggenheim's new documentary who are vying for one of the limited spots at rigorous, high-performing charter schools. They won't be chosen based on grades or test scores, but by a random lottery drawing.

Guggenheim, who also directed "An Inconvenient Truth," takes an unflinching, often heartbreaking look at the problems plaguing many public schools across the country.

What makes one school a success and another a dismal failure? According to the filmmakers, it all boils down to good teachers. The villain in Waiting for Superman is the teacher's union, starring American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten as Lex Luthor.

The film suggests that teacher tenure discourages accountability and rewards sub-par teachers, who are essentially guaranteed a "job for life" no matter how bad their performance.

On Oct 3, more than 100 educators from school districts across Westchester County watched a special screening of Waiting for Superman at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, and their reaction to the film was mixed.

In a discussion afterward, many said the film oversimplified solutions to the very complex problems facing America's education system and that unions and the tenure system were unfairly demonized in the movie.

"The statement that teachers who get tenure sit on their laurels is simply untrue," said Wendy Trager, a kindergarten teacher in the Ossining schools. "The day I got tenure it had nothing to do with me working on Saturday or planning on Sunday."

School administrators need to have an effective system of observing and evaluating teachers to make sure they're doing their job well, said Susan Strauss, the principal of Walter Panas High School in Cortlandt Manor.  "The idea that unions are interested in continuing teachers who don't do a good job is just not true."

Increasingly, teachers are being judged on how their students perform on standardized tests, and many of them believe that's not a fair assessment.

"Testing is not a good arbiter of success in school or life," said Dana Stein-Dince, a teacher in the Chappaqua schools.

Patti Bressman, an executive at the Chappaqua-based Children's Environmental Learning Foundation, said that school leaders need to "recognize what good teachers are doing in the classroom, and teach that at teacher's colleges." Teachers, especially new ones, need support and guidance to become better, she added.

If there is a hero in Waiting for Superman, it is the charismatic Geoffrey Canada, founder of Harlem Children's Zone, an ambitious program that helped turn around Harlem's failing schools, proving that poor neighborhoods can have good schools.

Canada explains that the Harlem Children's Zone "combines educational, social and medical services. It starts at birth and follows children to college."

Charter schools, which are not bound by union contracts or school boards, are what make the program so successful, Canada says. And the program's success is undeniable–from test scores to graduation rates to college enrollment.

Left unsaid in the film, however, is that the charter schools are funded in large part by private sources, such as the Bill Gates Foundation.

Elizabeth Sanger, a retired Mamaroneck teacher, pointed out that Bill Gates isn't about to swoop in and save the public school system.

Felix Flores, the principal of Claremont Elementary School in Ossining, said if public schools are privatized, "what happens to special needs students?"

Flores said the movie didn't address other issues that make a successful school, such as curriculum, professional development for teachers, and collaboration among district leaders.

Statistics and policymaking debates aren't what make Waiting for Superman so compelling; it's the story of the five students and their families whose fates rest on a lottery ball drawing or a piece of paper in a box.

Besides Anthony, we meet Daisy, an East Los Angeles fifth-grader who has already written to colleges to ask for admission; Francisco from the Bronx, who tells the filmmakers he wants to be a "recorder, like you guys"; and Emily, a California eighth-grader from an affluent school district, who is afraid of being tracked at a lower level when she moves to high school.

And there's Bianca, a Harlem kindergartener who attends a parochial school right across the street from her apartment that costs $500 a month.

Her mother Nikia says, "I don't care what I have to do, how many jobs I have to obtain, she's going to college." But when Nikia's hours are cut back and she falls behind on tuition, Bianca is not allowed to go to the graduation ceremony with the rest of her classmates. Instead, she watches them graduate from her window across the street.

Watching the lottery process is painful–the odds are so stacked against the children, you know some won't make it. As Anthony says at one point, the outcome is "bittersweet."

Sarah Arbitrio, president of the Ossining Teachers Association, called the lottery process "a huge tragedy." "I'm appalled that that's what our education has come to," she said.

While some teachers' reactions to Waiting for Superman were negative, they agreed that the movie will get people talking about education.

Ellen Doherty, the principal of John Jay High School in Katonah, said the film will "promote some knee-jerk reaction of defensiveness and blame" among the public, but it's a starting point to foster discussion.

Julie Schwartz, a communications officer in the Pleasantville school district, said the problems facing public schools are too multifaceted to lay the blame on just teachers and unions. 

"I think it will provoke discussion and that's great," she said. "But the conversation needs to be a broader one."

Waiting for Superman is playing at the Jacob Burns Film Center through Oct. 21. Visit the website for show times, tickets and more information.