WAITING FOR SUPERMAN 3.0***



This documentary sends out shock-waves of frustration and a sense of futility when it explores the state of America's public schools. Interviews with education specialists, school superintendents and even Bill Gates add up to an impressive assembly of informed adults who know what the problem is, but haven't figured out a way to fix it on a large scale.

Washington, D.C. schools superintendent Michelle Rhee says it well when she summarizes the basic problem: "Public schools fail when children's education becomes about the adults." The adults who fail these children are not limited to public officials and government bureaucrats although a large portion of the blame is reserved for ineffective teachers and the teachers' unions who ensure that those bad teachers receive tenure and cannot be removed from schools even for cause.. The documentary focuses on five public school children who represent inner-city kids with broken families and day-to-day financial struggles (except for a student of middle-class parents in the Silicon Valley). With that one exception, all are enrolled in failing public elementary schools and have little chance of graduating high school if they move on to the regularly assigned secondary schools in their districts. Often their only hope is to literally win the a lottery drawing for limited spaces at public charter schools and rare, effective public schools within or outside of their district. The film deals with a tangled web of adult issues that make a child's education more difficult, which probably puts it outside the spectrum of interest for most kids under age 12. .
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Waiting for Superman is useful as a way to get people who have no idea what's going on what is going on to at least get the cliff-notes version of it. It is, in short, a good documentary but not quite a great
one, and will be a big upper or a big downer depending on who you are in the audience, if you have kids, if you're a teacher, or if you're a politician.

Clark