Is director Davis Guggenheim right or is there an easier tactic to upgrade our schools?

Is America all set to settle for a great education - for the few? That is the question at the center of the film by director Davis Guggenheim, Waiting for Superman.

The film is selective and abridged, which shouldn't be shocking. A cottage industry has sprung up around pundits who've little substantive wisdom on public education, yet express their opinion nonetheless. For example, one of the foremost shortcomings of the movie: that Guggenheim selected to add in footage of a bad instructor in a Milwaukee classroom along with the rubber room in New York, but opted not to include footage of flourishing public schools where uncounted and unheralded teachers do extraordinary things every day to educate our children. This imbalance may suit Guggenheim's narrow and selective narrative; however it does not tell the complete and textured narrative of what is actually going on in American schools.

The movie brings consideration 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 throughout their lives. Despite Guggenheim's irrefutably best intentions, the movie falls short by casting 2 outliers in starring roles - the "bad" educator as criminal and charter schools as heroes all set to save the day. The trouble is that these caricatures are more fictional than factual.

Are there bad educators? Of course there are, just like there are bad accountants, and lawyers, and movie reviewers. I wish there weren't any inferior instructors. But American Federation of Teachers is in the head of developing and implementing methods to perfect teacher quality, and to deal effectively and efficiently with breakdowns when they occur.

In reality, union-led instructor help and evaluation programs (in which new and struggling teachers are coached and reviewed by more practiced peers) have shown to be far stricter on poorly performing teachers than those conducted by administrators.

No educator - myself included - wants teachers in the classroom who don't belong there. Those knowledgeable about education understand the importance of educator quality, but they don't buy into the simplistic notion that an outbreak of "bad instructors" is bringing down an otherwise thriving enterprise of education.

And tenure should never be misconstrued being a "job for life." Educators and educators unions are right to preserve a good, objective standard by which educators should 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 in the profession ought to be dismissed. Administrators also must fulfill their responsibilities: to support, properly evaluate and, when necessary, make tough decisions concerning the teachers entrusted to educate our kids.

I could clutter a cutting room floor with all of the snippets the documentary gets wrong. For example, 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, wholly 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 more complicated (but less sexy) and absolutely essential (but unexciting) realities, as in the fact that teachers need equipment, resources and assistance to do their jobs well? It's invigorating to say "fire the poor instructors," but it doesn't do much to improve schools. The plain, unsexy truth is that the best method to develop teacher quality is to do a better job of developing and supporting the educators to whom we entrust our children's 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, as well as those 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 students. But, in the end, no solution is as measurable, as available or as responsible as a remarkable 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 aren't the stuff of action flicks - supports for disadvantaged kids, extra help for those who start or fall behind, high expectations for all students and challenging coursework - but they achieve the desired results.

Visualize a sequel to Waiting for Superman, released a few years from now. Would we rather stick with the Hollywood ideal of providing an escape hatch - occasionally superior, most often inferior - to a handful of students? Or present a model in which we had summoned the resolve to perform the hard, but effective and far-reaching, work to make significant changes to entire school districts, providing all children with the best possible option - a highly effective neighborhood school? Ninety percent of American kids - almost 50 million kids - focus on our public schools. Revolution in a single classroom, a single school, or even a single school system isn’t enough.

We are not able to wait. And we shouldn't hinge our hopes on Superman, or on any mythical answer or silver bullet. We can't depend on anything other than replicable, measurable, effective ways to bestow all children the education they deserve.

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