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Very Cool!!!

Pretty Good

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Educator Geoffrey Canada was told by his mother in the 4th grade that Superman is not real. There is no omnipotent person coming to save the good people. The public education system is overcrowded and failing. Money spent on each student has doubled over time but the results have lagged behind. This movie follows several students and their struggling lower-class families across the country. The politicians keep trying including no child left behind. It is bad teachers, bad systems, and union imposed tenure. It examines dropout factories. There is Michelle Rhee, the public school Chancellor in D.C. The big baddies in this movie are definitely the unions. It does take a rather black and white position. Canada would open a charter school in poor-performing Harlem. The most compelling scene is probably families waiting with baited breathe during the lottery to get into a charter school.

"Waiting For Superman" Gabriela Santillanes Professor Ivis UPP 101 Submitted March 17 2014 Project 3 In "Waiting for Superman" Davis Guggenheim examines the flaws in the school system and its effects on the students and families that are in "failing neighborhoods." We follow five students to see the push and pull factors of how the school system along with the educators are failing to work with the students and communities to meet the proficiency standards or how their opportunities diminish as they move deeper into the system. It also follows other educators, such as Chancellor Michelle Reeves, on the search of ways to improve the system and their realization that there are more obstacles to face besides doing things such as creating charter schools. The primary focus of this documentary is split in that it focuses on the school system failure effects. It also focuses on the effects of how failure or success comes from the quality and effort that a teacher puts in their work; this brings up many discussions and arguments concerning tenure, teachers unions, and societies focus on what's really important. "Waiting for Superman" shows the shift that Chancellor Reeves along with her predecessors and political leaders such as our presidents, which has led up to the examination of many schools all across the country. It brings up and discussed many questions such as are the students being prepared to meet the requirements our country has set; which is answered through the statistics used to measure the standards from the No Child Left Behind program. This focus is important because the issue of success in schools is an issue that many people are aware of, it has been area of concern for centuries amongst our political leaders, but a path to a possible solution has not been found. The No Child Left Behind programs has a standard of 20% to 35% proficiency in reading and math to see if schools are teaching students the basics. When "Waiting for Superman" director sees the numbers and witnesses that there is 12% in Washington DC it asks are the students getting stupider or is there a flaw in the system? This information presented is used to shine light on the main argument that the real problem might be blamed on the failing schools in failing neighborhoods, not necessarily the failing students.One of the interesting arguments made is how children who are in "dropout factories," schools that have more than 40% of its students that don't graduate, are redirected into the streets. One of the educators in the film talks about it is very easy to ask a child how many people he or she knows that went to prison or how many graduated high school; we would find that they would know many more who went to prison. The film informs its viewers that we spend $33,000 per year per inmate every fours years, $132000 in total for every inmate. If a child's family has the opportunity to they can send the child to private school to receive a much better education. If instead of investing the money that we do on inmates and instead use that money to send children to private schools for 13 years we would be saving $24,000 per person. " Waiting for Superman" discusses the redirection of funds to the students so we can then have them go to college and contribute back to the economy, versus spending the money on the inmates where we only have money going one way and never coming back to anything productive. This redirection is a part of fixing the failing school environments which would then in turn cause a failing neighborhood to being to have the possibilities of change. The film argues that a huge flaw in the school system is the role that teachers play. It makes a strong stance that the adults are more important than the children. This argument comes from the fact that teachers and those involved in the teachers union weren't even willing to consider a change in the tenure contracts and on how pay is handled when we take into consideration the quality of the education the teachers are giving and the amount of effort they put in towards their students. The film looks at concepts that are negatively affecting schools such as "dance of lemons" and the famous rubber rooms in New York. These rooms are were tenure teachers are pretty much getting paid to sit around and wait their "trails" from things as serious as sexual harassment or lesser offenses. "Waiting for Superman's" argument is based on the gathering of research others have done and applying it to their argument. The statistics they use is based on the research that others have completed; the No Child left behind data is applied to their argument as a big supporter as to how the system is failing where it was expected to create successful results. Although I believe that their argument has a good direction it can have a stronger foundation and benefit from original research. Their argument is definitely something that needs further researcher to help bring a possibility of a better chance for the students in this country. Education fro students and children needs to become a bigger priority instead of such a heavy focus on adults; which "Waiting for Superman" did a good job on. But it could have used more original research on areas where teachers are paid on the basis of their performance, or if this concept is even applied anywhere successfully. The film made very good use of the data they presented. Their presentation was very effective in the sense that it allows the audience to understand what is being presented and how it is applied in the school system. Their presentation technique was executed well in that it reached out to the everyday family. Works Cited: Guggenheim, Davis. "Waiting for Superman." Paramount Vantage, 2011

Because I only watched the first 15 minutes this review should be taken with a very substantial grain of salt. The RT rating is 89, so critics thought it was very good. But to me it was unbearable. It begins with every cliché of the US education documentary: the brilliant black educator who thought he could change the schools in a few years and finds out how hard it is; a black-and-white film clip from the Fifties of stuffy white men looking like idiots (really, what's that supposed to tell us?); and cute, earnest inner-city kids with great Moms who are just having a hard time in this economy. Well, I went to school with inner-city kids; they were neither cute nor earnest.The one interesting note was when the filmmaker tells us that he sends his own kid to private school. It's an honest moment, but what are the implications of that? Maybe he examines them later in the film, but 75% of the problems of American public education would be solved if we closed the private schools and forced the children of the upper-middle- class to go to school with inner-city kids. That's what they did "when I was a boy"; but we had tracking, and that meant all the Jewish kids were in the 1 class and all the black kids were in the 4 class. (They started mixing up those numbers, and a 3 class could have smarter kids than a 2 -- as if that fooled anybody). But at least the schools were clean and safe because middle-class parents wouldn't have it any other way. Nowadays that kind of segregation would horrify everybody (and maybe rightly so), so the upper classes segregate themselves. Demand that they put their kids back in the system and you'll see just how much better public schools can be.

Waiting For "Superman" is an inside look at the problems with education in America. The film is extremely eye-opening, showing just how bad a state most of our education systems are in. They clearly illustrate that no matter the area, teachers are failing America's youth at an alarming rate. I found the film to be very biased though, as it only points out what's wrong with the system, and fails to mention any of the positives that still exist in education. It also fails to offer solutions for the problems. Guggenheim throws lots of facts and figures at us and repeats the same themes. It gets to a point where he's just beating us over the head with the same concepts. Many people saw this as an inspirational call to action, but me, I saw it as a guy complaining. Honestly, if you can't offer up a solution than why present the problem? I'm pretty sure that almost everyone in America knows how bad education has gotten, even if they don't have the exact figures in front of them