Documentary Film Review/Analysis

I watched the documentary Waiting For Superman. I found it to be a powerful documentary, and would certainly recommend it. As of yet, I have not had time to fact check all of the statistics cited, but overall it paints a rather deplorable picture of the education system in America.

The documentary follows the journeys of several families who are trying to get their children accepted into some of the best Charter schools out there. The film goes on to note however, that only 17% of Charter schools perform better than the average public school. The parents of the children proceed to outline their reasons for wanting their children to go to the Charter school, instead of their public school. The film goes on to note that many teachers unions have prevented School Districts from firing teachers who were ineffective, or just didn't even teach. I found this part to be somewhat one sided, because in other areas the right to fire a teacher whenever would certainly be abused. We need to seek a balance between job security for teachers, and ensuring that we cull the under performing teachers.

The film also outlined how the process is really quite heart wrenching. Many of the schools only accept a few dozen kids a year, and there are hundreds of applications. This leads to only a very few kids being given the opportunity to escape their schools, and have the chance of higher education. Many of the kids in the films were suffering under teachers who were largely ineffective at the their jobs, either because they were apathetic, or just plain bad teachers. This was compounded by the issue that the kids had no where else to go, because the schools they already attended were overcrowded, so there was no nearby school to which they could transfer in the hopes that they would have a better teacher.

The film interviewed several rather high profile people also; ranging from Michelle Rhee, to experts in the field of education who had years of research backing up their points. The points largely made by these experts, was that the teachers are the people who matter. If a student has a good teacher they have a greatly improved chance of success, but with a poor teacher comes a decreased chance of success, and so we must work to ensure that the teachers in our schools, are really excellent at what they do.

Overall, I feel that the film is certainly worth watching, as it was pretty interesting with regards to the issue it covered, but also with regards to the way in which it was made. The film was composed of a narrative. The narrative of these families hoping that their number was called in the Charter lottery. This narrative was interspersed with interviews from experts in the field of Education, extrapolating on the reasons that the parents had given for wanting their kids out of public schools. The interviews were pretty informal, and didn't use any silly jargon like synergy, which we all know is a buzzword. Tangents aside, the film was well made, and you should definitely watch the trailer which I will of course embed below.