I thought the film did a good job of highlighting problems, which I suppose is it's purpose. It also appeared very anti-union, and raises good questions about tenure, especially how tenure is different between K-12 teachers and university professors. It mentioned that we had a decent system 50 years ago, no real global competition then, but our schools haven't changed with the times. High Schools are doing the job set 50 years ago, tracking worked 50 years ago, but not today b/c there aren’t jobs for the lower end, schools haven’t changed but world has, today if you don’t go to college = “kinda screwed,” which screws over America in the end because we have to import educated workers. Interesting how US kids rank #1 in confidence, but #8 in scores when compared to 7 other countries.
I felt that the film was quite biased for charter schools, which are experiments with public funds, independent from school districts, and only 1 in 5 are actually producing results. I'm glad that they pointed out that 80% of charter schools are no better than public schools, but then they didn't show any successful public schools. It seemed like charter schools were the only ones who know how to turn things around. The California example was interesting where average home prices of $1mil in Redwood City, but students are not doing so well in reading and math, the family highlighted wants a charter school b/c it doesn’t track like the public school. Tracking is done by a single school official,where lower tracks have lower expectations and worse teachers, and it's then increasingly difficult for those kids to ever catch up. The CA University system has to remediate 50-60% of all incoming freshmen, even those who are "prepared" for college. What is that saying about our education system? They also highlighted the KIPP: Knowledge is Power Schools and Jeff Canada’s school in Harlem. Canada's school rethinks how school works in troubled neighborhood, never let kids get behind, pipeline that starts at birth with kids, increase classroom hours, summer school, Saturday school, pathway to college singular achievement, which is great, but we only saw one side of things, the positive.
Some Questions Raised:
Do bad neighborhoods cause bad schools? Or other way around?
What is our obligation to other people’s children and not just our own?
What happens to the kids who are not accepted to better schools? Are they doomed by fate?
Why is it so hard to be an engaging teacher and create engaging lessons?
How to overcome the problems from home? Poverty, crime, troubled homes, kids know more people who had gone to prison than who had gone to college...
I think there are some very interesting and valid points raised in the film, especially thinking about DC and the battle over tenures. I think that tenure should be awarded only after 5 years of experience so that there is a benefit of staying with the school, but it's not automatic in the 2nd year. I think that it needs to be awarded after a review system, that is streamlined from whatever they have now, and I don't think it should be a guarantee for life. There needs to be a check to make sure that educators are still teaching students and not just slacking off, but there needs to be lots of documentation and reviews in order for that to happen. And schools must try to work with the bad teachers who have tenure to help them improve, before there are any mentions of firing. I also believe that the reviews should be done quickly so you don't have a room of educators waiting for decisions while un-licensed subs are teaching kids. That's ridiculous. However, (moving on) I think that there are some things that KIPP and Canada's School are doing really well and that I think public education should be more willing to try, such as longer school days, a longer school year, not promoting students just by age (you actually have to pass to move to the next grade) and focusing on real world experiences, not teaching to a test. Maybe someday schools will embrace these changes.
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