My cousin Marina mentioned a documentary she thought I should watch called "Waiting For Superman". Ever since our conversation, I have been keeping an eye out for it on the DVD shelves of our local video stores. This past week, the DVD made it's debut appearance here in Canada. My husband and I sat down to watch it, and what I saw disturbed me to no end. It moved me, it enraged me, and it saddened me. What it did not do, was leave me untouched or uninvolved.
Over the course of the last two years, in discussions together, my husband and I have touched on some of the subjects covered here, but with respect to the Canadian public education system, specifically in Alberta. But we'll get to that later.
The debate on public education in the States is ongoing and necessary. Public education there is currently in a state of cardiac arrest. When proficiency tests in English and Math of eighth graders across the country show results that range from the lowest (in the nations capital) of 12% to the highest of 40% (NJ) on average, there is something inherently wrong with the system. Something is not happening that should be, and something that has been stuck needs change to free it. Those are some of the staggering statistics illuminated by this film.
The filmmaker, Davis Guggenheim, in 1999 filmed a documentary on public school teachers, the heroes of education. But when the time came for his own children to go to school, witnessing the state of public education, he chose to go the route of private schools. In examining this choice and the reason for it, he looks at those who have no choice, who have to make the best of the cards life has dealt them.
The film follows 5 children: Anthony, a fifth grader from Wahington DC, being raised by his grandmother; Daisy, a fifth grader from East Los Angeles, whose father is unemployed, and whose mother supports the family on a janitor salary; Emily, an eighth grader who lives in an affluent area of Silicone Valley; Francisco, a first grader from the Bronx, whose mother is a social worker, and the first college graduate in her family; Bianca, a kindergartener from Harlem, whose mother, on a receptionist salary pays $500/month to send her daughter to a private Catholic school.
These five children are the cast of real characters through whose lives we witness first hand the glaring issues within the public education system in the states. There are other characters as well: The Teacher's Union, whose teacher's contract includes guaranteed tenure to teachers, making it virtually impossible to fire teachers, keeping poor and uninvolved teachers within the school system without any form of accountability; Michelle Rhee, former Washington DC Chancellor of Public Schools, and founder of The New Teacher Project, which trains and hires high quality teachers, to be placed within the public school system; Geoffrey Canada, the founder of Harlem Children's Zone, a charter school in Harlem that follows the children from birth through college, partnering with them along the way; David Levine & Mike Feinberg, the founders of the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) schools, a charter school that began in Houston, Texas's inner city. There are now 82 KIPP schools across the country, showing outstanding results.
The documentary points out a failure not in a particular school, though some are highlighted, but in a system of schooling. Children who in elementary school were B students, once they reach 7th grade have become D students, on a road to nowhere. Some schools have earned the dismal title of drop out factories, where over 40% of their student body never graduate. This in turn has an effect on the neighborhood. With so many drop outs, with no training or skill and with too much time on their hands, we see crime rates increase, and many turn to a life of crime as one with purpose and the only viable alternative. Even affluent schools have their issues, with tracking systems that send high test performers and low test performers onto different tracks. Those placed in a lower track often get the worst teachers and lower set expectations. The inability to evaluate teachers, to fire them or even to reward them, due to the tenure clause, causes more harm than good for American students. It shouldn't be easy to fire teachers, but it should be an option. Being married to a university professor, I know the strenuousness and length of the tenure track. It takes years to receive tenure (not everyone does), and the process of evaluation is rigorous and many faceted. Tenure, once achieved is not a guarantee to complete freedom of accountability. There is a degree of security and safety within it, but a tenured professor can still be fired if they fail to perform to the expectations and standards set by the university. So this concept of almost immediate tenure for public school teachers, truly does baffle my mind.
I believe that this documentary calls all of us into accountability. For those who can afford to live in good school districts, this might be a blip on your screen. But for a majority of Americans in inner city and urban schools, this is a matter of life and in many respects on an emotional, practical and self perception level, death. When your child is one of those in an overcrowded urban school, with overwhelmed teachers, trying to do the best they can, and you know with a certainty of despair and hopelessness, that unless you get them out of this atmosphere, you will lose them and all the possibilities for their lives, it is a matter of desperation. For those of us with options, it calls on us to join in the debate, to work for those who have none.
Watching these five children and their parents, who want the best for their children, but unlike others, have few if any options, breaks the heart. It breaks your heart to know that Daisy's hopes and dreams of one day becoming a surgeon or a veterinarian is contingent on a lottery at KIPP LA Prep, where she is one of 135 students competing for 10 spots. It breaks your heart to hear Francisco's mother try everything in her power to provide what she can for her son, from extra tutoring, to working with him herself. Her only hope for him, to get him into the Harlem Success Academy through the lottery, where 792 children are competing for 40 spots, knowing that this is the only chance he has of getting into this program, his age being a key determining factor. It inspires you to watch Nakia's (Bianca's mother) determination to see her child go to college, to have a career instead of a job. Paying $500 a month for tuition, an amount that even for my husband and I would prove to be a high monthly expenditure, and yet here she was doing it, until her work hours were cut and she could no longer afford the school. To see the hope and possibility in Anthony, who with the help of a great second grade teacher and the backing of his grandparents, turned his academic record around, but who attends the worst public school in the country. It breaks your heart. How can it not?
These parents are determined to hope for their children against crushing odds. They are determined to dream for their children, in places without dreams. They are determined to sacrifice so that their children can have a better shot at life. And then I see so many of us who take our lives for granted, who do not value what we have, and often complain about these gifts, and it puts me to shame.
In Alberta, we are blessed to have a sound public education system. It has it's issues, but on the whole is fairly strong. We have the choice of sending our children to schools out of our district. We have faith based, language based, sports based, arts based, and academic based alternative programs that fall under the umbrella of public education. We have so many choices, that sometimes it becomes hard to choose. We have good teachers and we have bad teachers. For the most part there have been more good teachers than bad. With respect to the bad ones, my husband and I have often wondered why there is no stringent evaluation process for teachers. Something that could help those who are not quite there as teachers, improve and get better, by identifying their weaknesses. I think that that is something that should always be within the system that is public schooling. I do not want to give teachers a bad rap here, and if I have done so, I apologize for that. I understand all the other issues and baggage that comes with teaching within the public school specter that makes it a very challenging job. Teachers should be respected for the commitment they show our children, but they should also be held accountable, as anyone who has a job should be held accountable.
I encourage all of you to watch this documentary if you have a chance. It will engage you and provoke you, and perhaps inspire you to join in this debate, to help change things for our students, and for our teachers.
No comments:
Post a Comment