Review of "Waiting for Superman"

Michelle Rhee and Randi Weingarten, photo courtesy of New York Magazine

Whitney Tilson calls this review of Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman” a “well done overview of the titanic struggles going on in education.” At edReformer, we think that this movie has the potential to stoke the already lit fires under the feet of families concerned about their children’s collective academic futures. Will you be watching it?
What is the movie about?

“Superman” affectingly, movingly traces the stories of five children—all but one of them poor and black or Hispanic—and their parents as they seek to secure a decent education by gaining admission via lottery to high-performing charter schools. At the same time, the film is a withering indictment of the adults—in particular, those at the teachers unions—who have let the public-school system rot, and a paean to reformers such as Canada and Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools, who has waged an epic campaign to overhaul the notoriously dysfunctional system over which she presides.

If you want a good sense of Michelle Rhee’s opinion of how the education reform movement’s adult members should behave, you really need to see this one and a half minute interview I did with her in Washington, DC. She’s on fire! And she’s right. There’s never going to be any just cause for negotiation and for cooperation in public education reform, if the gatekeepers of what everyone has taken to calling the status quo don’t move away from their entrenched positions and start thinking about the students first.

Getting Smart Staff

The Getting Smart Staff believes in learning out loud and always being an advocate for things that we are excited about. As a result, we write a lot. Do you have a story we should cover? Email [email protected]

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