Analysis Of The Documentary Waiting For Superman

Public education has had a negative effect on students; it’s often because of the bigger class sizes, poor test scores, and high crime in the surrounding areas. Public schools need to revise their system to determine what’s the best fit for their student’s educational needs. All children who live in a school district have a right to attend a district school. Many parents would like more options and opportunities for their child, and would like to be involved in their child’s education. Charter schools are part of the answer for a better educational choice for children’s academic achievement. Charter schools have many successful methods and continue to pave the way for children’s education needs .

In 2010, Davis Guggenheim released one of the years most talked about documentaries, Waiting for Superman. His film was an eye opening, to many, look at the failings of the U.S. school system. The film follows five students across the U.S., who range in grade level from kindergarten to eighth grade, as they try and escape the public school system through a lottery for a chance admission to a charter school. Guggenheim lays the blame for the failing public education system at the feet of the various teachers unions, and makes a plea for the public in general to get involved in reforming the system. By analyzing Waiting for Superman through a sociological perspective, issues of inequality will be explained using the theoretical approach

Waiting for “Superman” is a documentary that focuses on five children-Anthony, Bianca, Emily, Francisco, and Daisy- who are looking for a better outcome for their education. The film is set up to follow different stories to explain how the school system works and the different ways that each school district functions. In detail, it unravels the struggle of the American school system and how the roles of charter schools has increased. It shows the five different charter schools that each child wants to attend while explaining how it would improve that child’s education. By following their stories, director Davis Guggenheim demonstrates how the American public school system is broken.

There are a number of ways that charter schools give parents greater individual control over their childrens’ education. No longer is a child bound to attend a particular school based on the geographical location of his or her home. Parents have the freedom to select a charter school that they feel would best suit the needs of their children1. Parents also have a greater say in the affairs of charter schools compared to public schools. In many instances, parents serve on the “board of education” governing the charter school, a board whose context is determined by a school’s charter and not state law. This contrasts with the traditional public school board that is limited to seven members elected from the community-at-large, regardless of whether board members have children in school. Moreover, a charter school board is entirely occupied with the operations of just one school instead of an entire district. Charter school supporters argue that this leads to less bureaucracy and greater efficiency in creating school policy that ultimately benefits students.

Mr. Geoffrey Canada and other individual’s that are playing a key role in the reformation of America’s educational system are also used in the documentary. He highlight’s there programs that appear to be now setting the idea that the learning gap can’t be closed on fire. He once again pulls on viewers heartstrings by showing the children that attend these public charter schools succeeding and having fun in school. He fails to show the struggles that they must go through every day,

The issue with identifying a single problem with the American education system is the extreme complexity of it. There are a number of factors that play into a student’s success. These factors include, but aren’t limited to: economic background, home life, teachers, family emphasis on education, administration, curriculum, and extracurricular activities. The film most often blames teachers for the prevailing problems with the education system. Most critics are quick to tell you that this is wrong; however one should not dismiss this idea so quickly. According to a study conducted by a Stanford economist named Eric Hanushek, teachers are accountable for up to twenty percent of a student’s success. Diane Ravitch, author of “The Myth of Charter Schools,” leads her readers to believe that this should absolve teachers from any wrongdoing. However, twenty percent is a considerable number, accounting for one fifth of a student’s success. Despite the numbers, teachers are an intricate part of the learning process. A great teacher can make or break you in the long run of really understanding the course

Despite Budde’s conceptualization of charter schools, his ideas were not widely accepted by the public until the early 1990s (Howard, 2017). The publication of “A Nation at Risk” in 1983, gave his ideas a boost. This publication exposed the reality of the American educational system and gave rise to questions of how children were learning in the United States. With the help of Al Shanker, the idea of charter schools was introduced to legislation, with Minnesota being the first state to build a charter school. Charter schools function in the manner that public schools do because they are publicly funded. Despite this, these schools are still based on choice, as they do not enroll all students based on zoning or district status. Moreover, these schools are privately managed, meaning that they do not have to follow the same laws that public schools do. These schools focus on performance and rely on student performance to continue to run. Despite the fact that some charter schools are doing substantially worse than comparable public schools, “some charter schools - especially those serving kids from disadvantaged backgrounds - are doing substantially better” (Lloyd, 2015). Albeit some schools are underperforming, “there are more outperforming charter schools than underperforming ones” (Lloyd,

In Waiting for Superman, a documentary by Davis Guggenheim, Guggenheim explains how teacher unions are making it impossible to change public education for the benefit of American students. Guggenheim begins the documentary by explaining what tenure is. Tenure was created by universities to protect professors from losing their jobs for political reasons, but only after many years of teaching were they granted tenure. Public school teachers believed they should be granted tenure, so they formed unions and went on strike. Eventually they were granted tenure, and it's now part of every teachers contract, making it almost impossible to evoke change in the school systems.

A proper education is one of the most important things in a child's life. In the powerful documentary, Waiting for Superman, directed by Davis Guggenheim, the audience is given an insight on charter, public, and private/ boarding schools. While the underlying tones of the film are leaning towards the positives of these prestigious schools, the main principle is how important an education is, and the steps the country is taking to improve it. Throughout the film, a strong pull of emotion is presented by showing the hardships of everyday families struggling for the education their kids deserve, as well as the multitude of statistics about the failing school systems in the country, and the credited charter schools, along with the people

One issue in education that I learned from this documentary is that getting into a charter school is very difficult because you have to go through a process that is called the lottery where there is chance that you do or do not get accepted. I understand why charter school are obligated to do the lottery because all families want to have the best education for their children's and their future but maybe recommend other programs that kids can join give them like help, hope , and don’t let them believe they cannot achieve theirs dreams. In conclusion If your planning to take your kids to a charter school they are amazing schools but don’t don't get your hopes up that you will get accepted,

The documentary Waiting for “Superman”, directed by Davis Guggenheim, utilizes pathos to keep the viewers engaged which causes the film to be effective. Following five children through their struggle of being accepted into a charter school is a use of pathos. The director does this in a few different ways. Three of these are by interviewing the parents, interviewing the children, and having the narrator tell stories about the children. The movie’s main point seems to be that the director wants people to be aware of how difficult it is to get into charter schools, but also be aware of how much some kids need it.

While these aspects of charter schools have been very important in beginning this movement, ultimately it is the effectiveness of charter schools that will determine their future. Evidence regarding the aggregate effectiveness of charter schools is mixed. Most famously, the 2009 study by the Center for Educational Outcomes stated that “17 percent, provide superior education opportunities for their students. Nearly half of the charter schools nationwide have results that are no different from the local public school options and over a third, 37 percent, deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their student would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools.” While those numbers resonate like a failure of the charter experiment, when examined further, some of those claims fall about. In his article “Improving Charter School Accountability: The Challenge of Closing Failing Schools,” David Osborne states that the fallacy in this study is that the majority of the evidence comes from “a student’s first year in a charter schools.” This taints the study because “when

In Waiting for “Superman” a film produced by a man named David Guggenheim addresses the issues that arise in the public school system, and how hard it is for kids to get a good education in the U.S. As Guggenheim quotes “no matter who we are, our what neighborhood we grew up in wanting to believe in our schools, we take a leap of faith.” Waiting for “Superman” effectively identifies failing schools, incompetent teachers, and administrative constraints as the main issues under mining education in the U.S. today. First, Guggenheim reached his audience through its focus on the stories of five children and their families as they apply to their neighborhoods local charter schools. Each child’s parent places them in the charter schools lottery drawing to earn a place in the school.

For decades the American education system provided parents with three choices: public, homeschool or private school. If they chose public then their child(ren) would be assigned to a school past on where they lived. However , “in the early 1990s a handful of states created independent public charter schools, providing opportunities for teachers and others to develop innovative schooling options “ (Palmer, Louann 2007). Not only did the creation of charter schools provide opportunities for the teachers, but gave parents a fourth option in educating their child(ren). Some veiw charter schools as a welcome addition to the public school sector, others doubt the benefit of these schools. There

Davis Guggenheim’s documentary Waiting for Superman follows the education of students who want to enhance their personal education. The movie was released in 2010 and its 111 minutes of shear information about public schooling, focuses on informing the audience about how the public school system needs to be changed by looking at a few of the “drop-out factories,” or failing schools, the documentary shows the audience. Also by following 5 students and educators, who all experience the public school system in different ways, the audience witnesses the need for a reform in education.