Waiting for Superman: The Good News and the Bad

The recently released film Waiting for Superman will arguably be one of the most important and widely viewed education documentaries of our time.

But did director David Guggenheim get it right?

In many ways, the answer is yes – and no.

On one hand, Guggenheim does a mesmerizingly good job of reminding us why public education matters.

The movie is powerful primarily because it forces us to go beyond sweeping statistics on school failure and to look into the eyes of five children and to recognize their hopes and dreams – and how we as a society have failed them.

Guggenheim makes us care deeply about the children profiled in the film, as they and their families anxiously maneuver a complex system, desperately trying to find a way out of their failing neighborhood schools.

During a time when our national attention span is particularly short and so much of our focus is on the economy, this is certainly no small victory.

Our hope is that as people are reminded of the stories of real children trapped in failing schools, there will be a brutally honest, far-reaching public discussion on how we can work together to make all schools – not just charter or magnet schools – better.

But where Waiting for Superman falls short, unfortunately, is in the suggestion that educational kryptonite exists and fixing public education is easy – that it is simply a matter of finding good, hard-working teachers and giving them the freedom that comes with teaching in a successful charter or magnet school.

The film goes so far, in one segment, as to propose that it is not our communities that are troubled, but that our schools are actually generating the violence, poverty and other ills generally found in high-poverty neighborhoods.

This, of course, ignores the reality that many of the problems in our schools are systemic. Addressing ways to fix our schools is certainly important. But if we meet the needs of our schools without also reaching out to families and neighborhood in crisis, little long-term change is likely to happen.

The truth is that when it comes to our public schools there is no kryptonite – no magic force or formula that will instantly turn around troubled schools and communities. But working together and looking at things honestly and systemically, change can come.

And that’s not kryptonite – it’s just common sense.