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I am certainly not going to jump into the fray concerning the merits or lack thereof of the film this post is about — Waiting for “Superman”.  Frankly, at the moment I am just too dang tired.  However, this year-old film has generated plenty of its own Controversy – and hopefully some helpful conversations if not some action.  But Oscar material?  Not.

Failure to Thrive — this should be the most obvious diagnostic evaluation of our nation’s educational disaster — but where lies ‘the cure’?

ABC News — Schools at the Breaking Point – Watch interview with David Guggenheim, Director/Producer of WAITING FOR SUPERMAN — film released September 24, 2010 (available on Netflix February 15, 2011, it’s in my queue) — exposes public school (and teacher?) failures  – “How can I make people care about other people’s children?” – “We are not going to fix the schools until the adults change them.”

Film’s website info:

In your city – “How do I help?”  Waiting for “Superman”

waitingforsuperman.com

What You Can Do Take Action

Write Your School Board Educate Yourself and Others

– How to Demand Great Schools

Waiting for “Superman” movie trailer – and HERE

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Charter school proponents speak out at ‘Waiting for Superman’ screening

Published:

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

The documentary film explores the overstressed public school system and how it fails its students, and promotes the charter system.

By Meg Boberg / Special to The Malibu Times

Education reform was the topic of the evening at Sunday’s screening of “Waiting for Superman” hosted by the Malibu Film Society. A crowd of supporters comprised of parents of Point Dume Marine Science Elementary School (PDMSS) students filled the room, along with other filmgoers, to catch the award-winning documentary that was followed by a screening of Oscar-nominated “The Fighter.”

The film, “Waiting for Superman,” addresses the shortcomings of the public school system and the benefits of charter schools, such as providing support for the low-achieving students who often slip through the cracks of an overstressed public school. However, charter critics say that PDMSS cannot be compared to the schools depicted in the film.  READ MORE HERE

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SUNDANCE Film Festival 2010

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

Davis Guggenheim 2009

AUDIENCE AWARD: U.S. DOCUMENTARY, Presented by Honda

“For a nation that proudly declared it would leave no child behind, America continues to do so at alarming rates. Despite increased spending and politicians’ promises, our buckling public-education system, once the best in the world, routinely forsakes the education of millions of children.

Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim reminds us that education “statistics” have names: Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily, whose stories make up the engrossing foundation of WAITING FOR SUPERMAN. As he follows a handful of promising kids through a system that inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth, Guggenheim undertakes an exhaustive review of public education, surveying “drop-out factories” and “academic sinkholes,” methodically dissecting the system and its seemingly intractable problems.

However, embracing the belief that good teachers make good schools, and ultimately questioning the role of unions in maintaining the status quo, Guggenheim offers hope by exploring innovative approaches taken by education reformers and charter schools that have—in reshaping the culture—refused to leave their students behind.”

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The Washington Post – The Answer Sheet – Posted at 10:30 AM ET, 01/25/2011

Why Oscar snubbed ‘Superman’ — deservedly so

By Valerie Strauss

“The documentarians who select the films for Academy Award nominations in the feature documentary category got it right: “Waiting for Superman” was not good/accurate enough to be selected.

The snub to Davis Guggenheim’s tendentious film was well-deserved, given that classic documentaries are factual and straightforward, and don’t, as did “Superman,” fake scenes for emotional impact.

Academy Award nominations are heavily political, yet this film didn’t make the cut even though President Obama called it “powerful” and welcomed to the White House the five charming students who starred in the film.

Advertising campaigns have been known to vault films into Academy contention, but not even a $2 million grant provided by the Gates Foundation to market “Superman” worked.

Though “Superman” was on the shortlist for an Academy Award in the feature documentary category, apparently the people who vote on the nominations — people who actually make documentaries — saw too many problems with “Waiting for Superman.”

And there are many, large and small.

Guggenheim edited the film to make it seem as if charter schools are a systemic answer to the ills afflicting many traditional public schools, even though they can’t be, by their very design. He unfairly demonized Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and gave undeserved hero status to reformer and former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. Guggenheim compared schools in Finland and the United States without mentioning that Finland has a 3 percent child poverty rate and the United States has a 22 percent rate.

One scene showed a mother touring a charter school — and saying things such as, “I don’t care if we have to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning in order to get there at 7:45, then that’s what we will do” — that turned out to be staged; she already knew her son didn’t get in, according to The New York Times.

Then there was the case of one of the five students featured in the film, Emily Jones, who lives on the suburban San Francisco Peninsula and who, according to “Superman,” was desperate to escape her traditional public high school, Woodside High, where she would be doomed to mediocrity.

Except that it wasn’t true. In an interview with John Fensterwald of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation, she said that Woodside “is a great school” that she really liked; she just liked Summit Prep Charter School better.

Late last year, in a piece on Movie Line’s Web site, editor S.T. VanAirsdale asked whether education historian Diane Ravitch’s scathing review of Superman in The New York Review of Books would derail the movie’s chances of nabbing an Oscar.

Just maybe it did.

And maybe this will help persuade those who believed that “Superman” unflinchingly showed reality that, in fact, it didn’t, and that it is time to take a new look at public education that doesn’t demonize teachers and traditional public schools.

(For the record, the films that did get nominations in the feature documentary category are: Exit through the Gift Shop,Gasland, Inside Job, Restrepo and Waste Land.)”

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Oscar nominations 2011: ‘Waiting for Superman’ will be waiting forever

January 25, 2011 – 11:06 AM

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“Teachers – STOP Waiting for “Superman” – he’s been found.” (Friday January 21, 2011)

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