The Failures Of The Public School System Essay

Educational systems in America are impaired, and the very educators that are meant to teach are the one’s pulling it down. That is the apparent message that Davis Guggenheim attempts to convey in his documentary “Waiting for Superman”. He uses many strategies to get his message across. Some of these include cartoons, children, and those reformers that are attempting to pull the system out of the ditch that it has found its way into. He makes his point very well, and uses facts and figures correctly. He does leave out some of the opinions of the opposing views, but it does not take away from his point that the educational system in America is in need of repair.

In Waiting for Superman, David Guggenheim’s documentary about America's school systems, he asks a multitude of very important questions that many people have been asking for a while now. Such as the question of if our teachers are essential to the well performance of a school, how can we, the everyday people, resolve poor performance within the school systems with an oftentimes uncritical view of teachers? In addition to that it raises the question on whether bad schools only exist in slums or other places as well. It also brings up the question can children excel in school if they are brought up in poverty.

Imagine being denied a basic education solely because your parents do not have a steady income, or being denied a basic education simply because you do not live in a place with access to a quality public school. For many, the lack of a satisfactory education is something that is not an issue, but one would be surprised to see how prevalent this problem actually is. The film, Waiting for Superman highlights the many issues that are indeed obvious when examining the United States’ education system. The film centers around failing schools in mainly urban areas where the problems seem to be the most abundant, but it does not deny the fact that these many problems do exist everywhere throughout the country. Director Davis Guggenheim generates, in the movie Waiting for Superman, the claim that our education system is failing, and highlights the idea that although there are some solutions that have shown effective there is still more that needs to be done. Guggenheim formulates his claim through his use of a shocking, sometimes sad tone as well as an effective narrative structure throughout the film.

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

EDUC 512 Issue 1.5 Should Public Schooling be Redefined? Issue 2.6 Are Local School Boards Obsolete?

One in seven adults in America will not be able to read this paper (Toppo). This is an alarming fact to me, because if they can’t read this then what can they read? There are many factors which have led to the failed education system of the United States. Some of the main factors that have led to this ongoing problem have connections with this economic hardship we are facing. Teachers and schools budgets are being cut which is harshly affecting education. Schools are leaning towards standardized tests to determine if a student has learned what they should through the curriculum. By these testing methods being forced on students and teachers, this affects what is taught in a class room by forcing teachers to lean more towards teaching

An important function of education is to prepare children with the academic skill that they need in order to function in society. However, the troubling aspect of the education in America is the fact that students’ performance in math and science does not match with other students in other countries. The filmmaker Davis Guggenheim spoke against public education and implied that charters schools are the hope for higher education. In the documentary “Waiting for Superman” released in 2010 the film demonstrated the dark side of public education in which parents and children expressed the desire for a better education system in search for guaranteed higher education. The film previewed a group of individuals in different geographical location in the United States who searched for a gateway entry to try to escape the public education system through a lottery. To examine the role education played in the film I will contrast three theoretical perspectives; the functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionism to comprehend the American education system.

After the American Revolutionary war, the people of the United States were responsible for determining the best course of action within the new republic. The Articles of Confederation were replaced by the new Constitution, which provided a general set of principles the government was to be guided by. This new system was a new and improved integration of historical warnings, hoping to prevent tyranny by individual or the masses and injustice. However, it quickly became apparent that a certain education was necessary to perpetuate this union. Before a new system for education could be introduced, public or private, a common goal and specifics on the different subjects to teach became a question the founding fathers and other prominent

their own school funds, mostly with real estate taxes. The bulk of the rest of

Today, education enables us to enlarge our knowledge and open doors for opportunities to the path of having a good future. In the five readings, each written by a different author, there was a lesson learned and something to take away from each one. Reading through the passages by Mann, Moore, Malcolm X, Gatto, Rose, and Anyon, each author contributed his or her point of view on general public education. This topic can be very argumentative depending on the quality of education people receive. Education today is the single most important mean for individuals to achieve their personal goals in the workforce.

The American public educational system is filled with an assortment of problems. Most students are graduating with less knowledge and capability than similar students in other industrialized countries. Classroom disruptions are surprisingly common, and in some classrooms, nearly continuous. The public education system is having difficulty adjusting to the no child left behind act. The No Child Left Behind(NCLB) is a landmark in education reform designed to improve student achievement and change the culture of American’s schools.

Since 1983 public education has been an issue in America. The system has been constantly changing every year with reforms. This constant change has been driven by the American people’s perception that education has declined and something should be done about it. First there was an increased emphasis on basic skills, making school years longer and more graduation requirements. Second, many began focusing on increasing teachers professionalism. Third, they began restructuring many things such as how the schools were organized and how the school day was structured etc. Now today the most of the American people believe that not enough money is given to public schooling. They associate academic improvement with the money the school is funded.

Education and learning are important in today's society. It seems America has a wonderful education system, but if we think deeply, we can figure out that most part in American education is broken. This is a sad truth that the educational system is not working as is supposed to be. Now it becomes messy and it mostly became a business place where money matters. And people should do something to improve it again. This paper will continue to discuss on education in the United States based on the videos depicting the broken education system, the Common Core, and Dan Rather's analysis of the Detroit Education system.

New York City consists of five boroughs, Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. The borough that I reside in is Brooklyn. Brooklyn has approximately 2.592 million people inhabiting this district and approximately 23.4 percent of individuals who reside in Brooklyn, NY come from a low-income household or in other words come from poverty. With catholic and private schools being expensive, people have to rely on the education system to provide their children with a good education. In this paper I will be discussing the public school education system ranging solely up to high school in Brooklyn New York and giving a general idea of the New York education system as well.

Education is an issue that touches everyone’s lives in one way or another. Whether you are a parent, student, teacher, taxpayer, or employee, the effects of education on society can be seen everyday. For this reason, public schools are a top concern among political leaders. Over the past twenty-five years, confidence in the nation’s public school system has dramatically declined. While the public for the most part seems to support their school district, criticism is not lacking. Recent years especially have shown dissipating support. It appears that the prevailing view is that public education, as a whole, is in bad condition and is in need of a renewed effort to fix it. Private schools seem to fare