Saving Our Schools: Superman or Real Solutions?
Saving Our Schools: Superman or Real Solutions
?
Is America prepared to accept a magnificent education - for the few? That is the subject in the heart of the documentary from director Davis Guggenheim, Waiting for Superman.
The movie is selective as well as deficient, which shouldn't be remarkable. A cottage industry has developed around pundits who've little substantive knowledge on public education, yet give their opinion nonetheless. For instance, one of the major shortcomings of this movie: that Guggenheim chose to incorporate footage of a flawed educator in a Milwaukee classroom and the rubber room in New York, but chose to not incorporate footage of flourishing public schools where uncounted and unheralded teachers are doing extraordinary things every day to teach our kids. This lack of balance may suit Guggenheim's narrow and selective narrative, but it does not tell the complete and textured account of what is actually going on in American schools.
The documentary calls awareness on the kids who're being failed by our education system and therefore deprived of the type of education that will open doors for them all through their lives. Despite Guggenheim's undeniably good intentions, the movie falls short by casting 2 outliers in starring roles - the "bad" teacher as villain and charter schools as heroes ready to save the day. The dilemma is that these pictures tend to be more fictional than realistic.
Are there deficient instructors? Obviously there are, just as there are bad accountants, and lawyers, and documentary reviewers. I wish there weren't any flawed instructors. But American Federation of Teachers is in the head of developing and implementing ways to perfect instructor quality, and to deal effectively and efficiently with problems when they occur.
In reality, union-led instructor assistance and examination programs (in which new and struggling teachers are trained and assessed by more practiced peers) have been shown to be far stricter on poorly performing teachers than those conducted by administrators.
No teacher - myself included - wants teachers in the classroom who don't belong there. Those knowledgeable about education understand the importance of teacher quality, but they don't buy into the simplistic notion that an epidemic of "bad educators" is bringing down an otherwise thriving enterprise of education.
And tenure should never be misconstrued being a "job for life." Teachers and teachers unions are right to preserve a good, objective standard by which educators ought to be judged. But due process must not disintegrate into glacial process, and teachers who - at the end of a fair, efficient process - are deemed unfit for the profession should be dismissed. Administrators also must fulfill their responsibilities: to support, properly evaluate and, when necessary, make tough decisions concerning the educators entrusted to educate our children.
I can litter a cutting room floor with all of the bits and pieces the picture got wrong. For instance, New York City's rubber room has been closed, after years of union-led efforts to slam the door on this practice.
For argument's sake, let's say a miracle happened overnight and our current, fully inadequate system of evaluating instructor effectiveness suddenly became adequate or, better yet, accurate. Say administrators identified instructors who simply didn't succeed, and removed them from their classrooms. What then?
Who wants to deal with the extra difficult (but less sexy) and utterly essential (but unexciting) realities, e.g. the fact that educators need tools, resources and aid to do their jobs well? It is invigorating to say "fire the poor teachers," but it does not do much to enhance schools. The basic, unsexy fact is that the best method to enhance instructor quality is to do a better job of developing and sustaining the educators to whom we entrust our kids' educations. But some seem to buy into the world according- to-Superman viewpoint of education reform - that the "best performing schools" are the boutique schools that enjoy extra resources and are more selective in choosing their student populations. I mean no disrespect to the many well-intentioned people who set out to provide a good education to children that have been denied that right. But most of them fall short, and even people who defy the odds touch only a minuscule percentage of students.
The opportunity for an incredible public education should come not by accident, not even by choice, but by right.
We all agree that right is being denied to too many kids. But, in the end, no solution is as scalable, as reachable or as accountable as an excellent neighborhood school. I've seen such success stories in real life. In schools everywhere from New York City to Albuquerque, N.M., from St. Paul, Minn., to Philadelphia, and from Los Angeles County to Baltimore, children are defying the odds. The solutions are not the stuff of action flicks - supports for underprivileged students, extra help for those who start or fall behind, high expectations for all students and challenging coursework - but they achieve the desired results.
Picture a sequel to Waiting for Superman, released a few years from today. Would we rather stick with the cinematic model of providing an escape plan - occasionally superior, most often inferior - to a handful of students? Or present a model in which we had summoned the strength to do the hard, but effective and far-reaching, work to make meaningful changes to whole school systems, providing all children with the best possible choice - a very effective neighborhood school? Ninety percent of American students - nearly fifty million kids - focus on our public schools. Revolution in a single classroom, a single school, or even a single school district is not enough.
We are not able to delay. And we shouldn't place our hopes on Superman, or on some mythical solution or silver bullet. We can't rely on anything other than replicable, scalable, successful methods to supply all kids the education they deserve.
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