{"id":6719,"date":"2016-04-17T20:38:12","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T00:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/?p=6719"},"modified":"2016-04-17T20:38:12","modified_gmt":"2016-04-18T00:38:12","slug":"waiting-for-superman-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/2016\/04\/waiting-for-superman-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiting for “Superman”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Waiting for \u201cSuperman\u201d <\/em>by Davis Guggenheim follows the real experience of five students to see the problems of public school system and interviews many education reformers nowadays to talk about how to fix these problems. At the beginning of the film, it uses data and diagrams to show the failure of public school education system now.<\/p>\n

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Among all of these problems, by the experience of Francisco and his mother, Guggenheim leads the audiences to what he thinks is the most critical problem, bad teachers and teacher unions which protect these teachers. \u201cStudents with high-performing teachers progressed three times as fast as those with low-performing teachers, and yet they cost the same to school\u201d (Guggenheim, 34:50).<\/p>\n

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In the film, he provides many examples of bad teachers with recording of real scene in school, cartoon, news and movie clips and interviews of famous educators. Once a kid videotaped a teacher reading newspaper and not teaching while the students were playing by themselves at the back of the classroom. However, these teachers can\u2019t be fired since they are under the protection of teacher unions. Even Howard Fuller later fired that worst teacher in the videotape, he had to rehire him back with one year\u2019s pay. These teachers are called \u201ctenure\u201d which guaranteed their jobs for life (Guggenheim, 36:05). In the clip of The Simpsons<\/em>, after the second the teacher becomes tenure, she lays on the chair and let the student teach the class.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s a term called \u201cthe dance of the lemons\u201d (Guggenheim, 43:30). \u201cLemon\u201d teachers are those bad teachers which can\u2019t be fired. At the end of the year, the principals get together and pass that teacher to the next school. Because of the contracts with teachers union the school not only can\u2019t fire the bad teacher, but also tie teachers\u2019 hands. Even some teachers do really well, schools can\u2019t pay them more based on their performances since it\u2019s not in the contract (Guggenheim, 42:02).<\/p>\n

Even though in the film, David Guggenheim really criticizes the teacher unions, Richard D. Kahlenberg who is the writer of The Smarter Charter <\/em>argues that there is no empirical support and evidence saying \u201cteachers\u2019 unions are the central impediment to educational progress in United States\u201d (Kahlengerg, 2012). Kahlenberg states that teachers unions are actually doing some good things such as paying teacher bonuses to attract them to high-poverty schools. Teachers unions allow teachers to have their own voices. What\u2019s more, by responding to the problem of bad teachers in the film, Kahlengerg says that teachers unions today are trying to get rid of those teachers who are not working, \u201cnot based strictly on test scores or the subjective judgement of principals, but through multiple measures of performance, including \u201cpeer review\u201d\u201d(Kahlengerg, 2012). Kahlengerg believes that teachers unions are actually strengthening schools instead of being the heart problem of education system.<\/p>\n

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Guggenheim, Davis.\u00a0Waiting for \u201cSuperman.\u201d<\/em>\u00a02010. Film.<\/p>\n

Kahlenberg, Richard D. \u201cBipartisan, but Unfounded: The Assault on Teachers\u2019 Unions.\u201d American Educator<\/em> 35, no. 4 (2012): 14\u201318.<\/p>\n

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Waiting for \u201cSuperman\u201d by Davis Guggenheim follows the real experience of five students to see the problems of public school system and interviews many education reformers nowadays to talk about how to fix these problems. At the beginning of the film, it uses data and diagrams to show the failure of public school education system … Continue reading Waiting for “Superman”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1573,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[106],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6719"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1573"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6726,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6719\/revisions\/6726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}