For America’s children the education system is often literally a lottery. That is the prime message of a new documentary about America’s schools, Waiting for Superman. Made by the team that gave us An Inconvenient Truth, and supported with the sort of marketing budget that other documentary filmmakers can only dream of, it is intended to create a surge in public support for education reform at least as great as the clamour to do something about climate change generated (for a while) by Al Gore’s eco-disaster flick.
The timing could hardly be better. The ‘jobless recovery’ is finally bringing home to Americans the fact that too many of those who go through its schools are incapable of earning a decent living in an increasingly competitive global economy. The number of jobs advertised but not being filled is increasing even as the unemployment rate stays resolutely high. And despite its depressing enumeration of the failure of so many schools, particularly in poorer urban areas, its miserable ending and the bleakness of its title, the movie also has a message of hope: there are good schools and teachers in America, whose methods could make its education system as good as any in the world if only they were allowed to.
That truth, recognised by anyone who has spent even a few hours in, say, a KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) charter school, is an inconvenient one to the teachers’ unions, which the film rightly identifies as a big chunk of kryptonite standing in the way of a dramatic rescue for the children of America. For example, the film features efforts to reform the school system in Washington D.C, led by Adrian Fenty, the mayor, and Michelle Rhee, his combative schools chief, including a scene where Rhee’s offer to double salaries of teachers in exchange for them giving up tenure and accepting “merit pay” (performance-related wages) is rejected by the unions. Right on cue for the launch of the film, Fenty has just lost his local Democratic Party primary to a more union-friendly rival, so Rhee may well be leaving. The $1million (Rs.4.5 crore) spent during the campaign by the American Federation of Teachers played a crucial role in Fenty’s defeat.
The teachers’ unions have resolutely opposed efforts to pay good teachers more than mediocre ones, to fire the worst performers and shut down schools that consistently fail to deliver decent education. This, coupled with underfunding in poor areas, has resulted in a shortage of good schools; so the few that are worth getting into are hugely oversubscribed, with places allocated by the public lotteries which provide the grim climax to the movie. Rhee upset the unions by refusing to accept all this, closing dozens of schools and firing 1,000 teachers, including the head of her own children’s school.
To be fair, the unions are not all bad. As Bill Gates has pointed out, they are taking part in an initiative funded by his foundation to develop new measures of teacher performance, which could be the basis for a form of merit pay. Moreover, he notes reform cannot succeed without the support of the majority of teachers.
Even so, the fact is that the teachers’ unions are the primary obstacle to reform — which presents leading Democrats, and above all President Obama — with a crucial test: will they be willing to confront a core part of their membership in the interests of America’s children? If he has any doubt as to which side he ought to be on, he need only ask that bellwether of public opinion, his old friend Oprah Winfrey. She recently invited Rhee onto her show, where the audience gave her a standing ovation.
(Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)