Waiting for "Superman"

very good

1. It is not impossible to get rid of ineffective teachers, as stated by some respondents. It takes effort to accomplish this task. School systems and most administrators are not willing to take on the extra effort required. You can’t just throw someone out of a classroom without making some type of effort to help them improve. Staff development and mentor teachers are very important to creating more effective teachers. 2. This movie is a fairy tale at best. They want the public to think they are working these miracles with the same funding as the average public school. That is not true. Corporate America (like the Gates Foundation) has invested huge sums of money in these schools to make them appear to be “Supermen”. They will gain a new frontier for profiteering as the number of charter schools increase. If you give every school a virtually unlimited budget they can accomplish the same increases in student achievement seen in this movie. 3. The public and many government leaders need to wake-up and realize that education is important work and not a carnival game. Programs like Race to the Top which make school systems compete for funds leaves far too many needy schools out in the cold—set up to fail.

I don't care how "good"a book is if it has language and content that is so sensitive we cannot put it on the shelves of our school libraries. What parent wants to deal with the language issue? We want our kids reading quality literature--not stuff we have to constantly explain. Sure the kids will read it because it is "forbidden." What media specialist wants to explain why it is on the shelf if it is too controversial???????????

This was an entertaining, informative documentary which follows several students in their attempt to qualify for charter or magnet schools due to their low-performing neighborhood public schools. "Waiting for Superman" shows that although U.S. schools were once some of the most successful in the world, we have not kept up with the changing world, and many students are doomed to failure by schools that barely graduate students, much less prepare them for college. This documentary puts the majority of the blame not on teachers or principals but on teachers' unions, which powerfully control the educational system by donating heavily to political campaigns. As seen with recently-fired Washington, D.C. superintendent Michelle Rhee, the unions make it almost impossible to get rid of ineffective teachers and are unwilling to consider any changes that might require more work for their teachers. Successful schools are also shown, and they give hope to the future of education in our country, This documentary made me want to go back and teach in an inner-city classroom.