Waiting for Superman

The new documentary about education has been out for a few days, and the national coverage continues in earnest. What an interesting time to be in education. We have huge budget cuts throughout the nation, and teachers have become the focus of the problems in our public schools. While it's true that graduation rates are embarrassingly low at many public, urban high schools, the reality is that so much of what Davis Guggenheim's Waiting for Superman covers is not the rule but rather the exception. When parents are asked to rate their children's schools, they almost always give them high marks. How do they feel about other schools? They report that they are not as good as their neighborhood schools.

Twenty years ago the governor of New Jersey signed legislation that closed the income gap between urban and suburban school districts. Inner-city schools were spending significantly less per student than their suburban school counterparts, so state funding formulas changed. So do we now have inner-city achievement that rivals that of the suburbs? No. Academic success is incredibly complicated, and simply spending equal amounts of money doesn't yield equal results. Sure, Waiting for Superman tugs at the heartstrings of audience members--how can you not sympathize with these children who deserve more? But parents in most school districts cannot relate to what's happening in those schools. Guggenheim should be commended for bringing the problems of urban schools to light, but at the same time he needs to make it clear that what is happening in inner cities is not happening in the majority of schools throughout the country. If it were, it wouldn't take a documentary to bring it to people's attention.