I have a 12-year-old that goes to public school. You do not come off as the hero of this movie. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you think that most of the kids in D.C. are getting a crappy education right now? Coming up, right after we're finished here, MSNBC will re-air the two-hour town hall. I actually don't -- I think we could continue one city at a time. Sept. 23, 2010. CANADA: Look, no business in America would be in existence if it ran like this. Why did you pick this topic? We need to get involved and take ownership over this and go to the schools and tutor, go to the schools and mentor. [38] The documentary was directed, filmed, and edited by Julie Cavanagh, Darren Marelli, Norm Scott, Mollie Bruhn, and Lisa Donlan. BRZEZINSKI: Why not inspire them with pay? No one wants lousy teachers. And that still scared the hell out of the Washington union. RANDI WEINGARTEN, PRES., AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS: Sure. "Waiting for Superman," a fascinating new documentary, is drawing attention to the state of our public school, directed by Davis Guggenheim, who brought us We'll be right back. I went up to a school up there. SCARBOROUGH: Right. schools. We need to have great curriculum. You are not exactly what some would consider to be a conservative filmmaker. We're also joined by Deborah Canny of the Harlem Village Academy. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Next year, Anthonys class will move up to junior high. But I do think though Davis even though we may disagree there wasn't a public school or a public school teacher that was pictured in this film, people have done amazing jobs. The issue here in terms of education -- SCARBOROUGH: Wait. 1. Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools (the district with some of the worst-performing students at the time), is shown attempting to take on the union agreements that teachers are bound to, but suffers a backlash from the unions and the teachers themselves. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. endstream A good education, therefore, is not ruled out by poverty, uneducated parents or crime and drug-infested neighborhoods. At the end of the film, there is writing that states: The problem is complex but the steps are simple. << We increased attendance rates. << I get to spend a lot of time with the kids. BRZEZINSKI: What are you saying, Randi, what is he saying? SCARBOROUGH: You also told me that there was a split in the civil rights community, that older members of the civil rights community sometimes fought younger members of the civil rights community who were reformers. They clearly illustrate that no matter the area, teachers are failing America's youth at an alarming rate.. It's a random selection. GUGGENHEIM: Those kids can't learn. I think that we've all I mean Davis said it when he said he passed three public schools. These are your schools, your communities. BRZEZINSKI: Nakia, thank you. These high-performing charters are going in and they're reaching every kid and they're sending 90 percent of their kids to college. We're in a crisis. Davis, god bless you. /Pages 1 0 R 4,789 Views. And I don't want to make this about the presumptive mayor. What were the results of the kids who came in and were about to graduate this June, late May, what is the change that has happened with these children? /Properties << BRZEZINSKI: How old is she? MICHELLE RHEE, CHANCELLOR, D.C. PUBLIC SCHOOLS: Well, I think you should probably ask the union folks that question. Waiting for "Superman" is a 2010 American documentary film written and directed by Davis Guggenheim and produced by Lesley Chilcott. Take a moment. It starts with teachers becoming the very best, leaders removing the barriers of change, neighbors committed to their school, you willing to act (Guggenheim 1:45:05-1:45:28). You talked about evaluations like every other business. /GS0 18 0 R There's a lot of people in this country that aren't feeling what we feel. /BleedBox [ 0 0 595.27600 841.89000 ] /Rotate 0 >> Coming up next, MSNBC's going to re-air the teacher town hall hosted by Brian Williams. /GS1 17 0 R Somebody who's fighting for kids like Daisy is John Legend. Broadcast: Saturday, September 25, 2010. One of the most disheartening moments of the movie for me is when you were driving away from the meeting, your meeting, with the teachers, and it just showed your face. /T1_1 20 0 R All of my kids have gone to public school. " YR0^hC#mlj'@]Gc2x}SVvP[sL,yD1-ut |c,{CG1 Even during the MSNBC town hall today, there were teachers who say I don't care about tenure. Film. But when I saw you after the film, and I would -- being macho, hey, Davis, how you doing, man? 2 0 obj BRZEZINSKI: What was wrong with what she was doing? SCARBOROUGH: Really quickly. /Type /Page /TrimBox [ 0 0 595.27600 841.89000 ] I think the point of departure between Michelle and I may be that I see, just like in Finland and Singapore and other places, that we need to all actually work together, focused on instruction, focused on how we help people do the best jobs they can and then -- BRZEZINSKI: Wasnt that what she was doing? WEINGARTEN: Im just -- that's why there was a cap from the early -- SCARBOROUGH: We have a lot of people that want get involved here. [17] The Wall Street Journal's William McGurn praised the film in an op-ed piece, calling it a "stunning liberal expos of a system that consigns American children who most need a decent education to our most destructive public schools. You cannot say we want more resources to go to kids when in fact in this city, Joel Klein is spilling $100 million a year to pay for teachers you saw it in the movie, who aren't actually teaching. I think we all have to look in the mirror and say, what have we done wrong up until now and what do we need to do better? I don't care what I have to do, I don't care how many jobs I have to obtain but she will go to college. You say no one wants lousy teachers but there are a lot of really lousy teachers who are protected by this current system. We just don't want lousy teachers to be able to keep their jobs and kids not get an education. This is why. I have a good feeling about this. Let me answer your question first. SCARBOROUGH: What we hear, Randi, morning after morning after morning from progressives, from conservatives, from Republicans, from Democrats, from independents, seems to be the same thing. << /ArtBox [ 0 0 595.27600 841.89000 ] (d acJ4@%Q8C/! You get to the nation's capital, the nation's capital, only 16 percent of students are proficient in math. And it's more about a jobs program than it is about the kids. GUGGENHEIM: The dream of making a movie like this is conversations just like this, the fact that you and NBC and Viacom and Paramount and Get School bring a movie to the table and let people in this room have a real conversation about to fix our schools is essential. Obviously at the end most people watching this movie teared up. "[22] Anderson also opined that the animation clips were overused. BRZEZINSKI: When the results came down, we watched you respond, we watched her respond. Seventy-eight percent of them, this is not our survey, this was their survey, said a union was absolutely essential to them to try and stop school politics or principal abuses. I get to meet all the wonderful teachers out there. SCARBOROUGH: All right. The union itself has instead of focusing on good teachers and how we need to help them, give them the tools and conditions, we have always focused on, you know, the due process protections. /T1_0 52 0 R Teaching standards are called into question as there is often conflicting bureaucracy between teaching expectations at the school, state, or federal level. Wouldn't that have been better? After half a year of teaching, I talked to her yesterday, she had brought her kids a year -- more than a year and a half ahead. endobj SCARBOROUGH: Michelle, let me ask you this. This film follows five children and documents them to see what their lives and schools are like. /MediaBox [ 0 0 595.27600 841.89000 ] And it started to haunt me, the idea that kids in my own neighborhood, and I live in a pretty good neighborhood, aren't getting what my kids have. WEINGARTEN: Michelle and I may disagree on the particulars of this, but there are about 50 or 60 districts that are using the proposal that we made and ultimately we think if we do that, if we fix teacher evaluations so it's about teacher development and evaluation, we can fix this problem. "[19] Forbes' Melik Kaylan similarly liked the film, writing, "I urge you all to drop everything and go see the documentary Waiting For "Superman" at the earliest opportunity. One of the reasons for the high test scores, writes Ravitch, is that many charter schools expel low-performing students to bring up their average scores. Anthony's class visits the Seed School, the first urban public boarding school in the country. /ArtBox [ 0 0 595.27600 841.89000 ] I support public schools. WEINGARTEN: John. >> BRZEZINSKI: What happens to these kids? SCARBOROUGH: Geoffrey Canada, some remarkable things are happening in Harlem. Because what's happened in so many instances, is that the evaluation system is what's broken. "[21] Melissa Anderson of The Village Voice was critical of the film for not including enough details of outlying socioeconomic issues, writing, "macroeconomic responses to Guggenheim's querygo unaddressed in Waiting for "Superman," which points out the vast disparity in resources for inner-city versus suburban schools only to ignore them. Everyone in this room is feeling something powerful tonight. We have to go to break right now. WebFILM SUMMARY With passion and urgency, WAITING FOR SUPERMAN advocates for the educational welfare of Americas children in a public school system that is severely You all have your numbers, right? I want to be a doctor and I want to be a veterinarian. Statistical comparisons are made between the different types of primary or secondary educational institutions available: state school, private school, and charter school. We could say to everyone in education we have to give a couple of more hours. LEGEND: Well, you know, there are plenty of constituencies that usually align with the union, for instance. I think the question about whether school reform can continue at as an aggressive rate under him is whether hes going to be able to stand up to the fact that SCARBOROUGH: Let me ask you this Michelle. The superintendent wants her to say. 1 0 obj An examination of the current state of education in America today. BRZEZINSKI: Its worked for you and for hundreds of kids in Harlem. "[18] Kyle Smith, for the New York Post, gave the film 4.5 stars, calling it an "invaluable learning experience. SCARBOROUGH: Its about jobs. It's not about charter schools. << Joe and I saw the movie a few days ago and we literally walked up Broadway, I think it was, in complete silence, both feeling very twisted and angry about what we had seen. I want to ask you another really quick question and then go around to the rest of the panel. 40 years later we're still fighting for equality and one of the biggest barriers to achieving quality is the fact that so many kids in our country can't get a great education. << Mika and I want to welcome you to this special hour. WebTRANSCRIPT: WAITING FOR SUPERMAN PANEL DISCUSSION WITH: NBC'S JOE SCARBOROUGH; NBC'S MIKA BRZEZINSKI;DAVIS GUGGENHEIM, DIRECTOR, She was a teacher in Indianapolis. We increased graduation rates. I think what's happened in places like Washington and I saw it compared to New York City. RHEE: I'm just wondering, if the AFT was putting a million dollars into mayoral campaigns all across the country just based on who the teachers liked, I would buy that argument. You could fail those kids for another 20 years, everybody keeps their job, nobody gets the go. BRZEZINSKI: Exactly. /BleedBox [ 0 0 595.27600 841.89000 ] It is about working together to create problem solving contracts and ultimately, Michelle, it's not about you or I. So let me say, because I get told a lot that Im teacher bashing. << BRZEZINSKI: You can hear the distrust here. WEINGARTEN: I think look, again, we had a moment in time where we actually got to an agreement. We've been talking about the teacher town hall hosted by Brian Williams earlier today. I've been amazed by what's possible. GUGGENHEIM: And the stakes for them. My kids have won the lottery. RHEE: First, I think I would be remiss if I did not point out to everybody that there's been a lot of talk about public schools, public schools. I think if we actually got to what constitutes a good teacher and had that kind of standard we'd all be in the same place on that and there are about 50 or 60 districts right now, I made a proposal in January about how to overhaul evaluation. Now, a couple of years ago, an independent group called Ed Sector actually surveyed a whole bunch of teachers and asked teachers the question about whether they needed or wanted a union. >> Is there any give here? And she thought I was crying because it's like Santa Claus is not real and I was crying because there was no one coming with enough power to save us. These are our communities. Waiting for Superman, a documentary about the mediocre public school system in the U.S., uses both techniques to great effect. BRZEZINSKI: And the reaction that we saw just moments ago was the same, these are people who know. BRZEZINSKI: No. Things such as the ease in which a public school teacher achieves tenure, the inability to fire a teacher who is tenured, and how the system attempts to reprimand poorly performing teachers are shown to affect the educational environment. Eighth graders at Kipp L.A. Prep get triple the classroom time in math and science. By showing its audience that even charter schools close their doors to some students, which them forces these students to attendfailing public schools, the video illustrates howthere are still flaws to the American public school system and challenges that need to be addressed. All you have to do is listen to people in Washington about it. Towards the end of the film, there is a segment that illustrates the charter school lottery as it takes place for different schools. But we need to have real evaluation systems, which is what the union has been focused on, so that teachers are really judged fairly. /Resources << The attendance and the schools itself. When you have kids from Harlem going there with first grade reading proficiency and science proficiency and they leave three years later with 100 percent proficiency, it just -- at some point it becomes a moral issue. endobj I want to just ask Randi, you've been taking pot shots from everybody here on stage, including us at times. Yes, first or second grade skills. There are also comparisons made between schools in affluent neighborhoods versus schools in poorer ones. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Rhee said that only a small number of teachers and principals cheated. And it says that if all of us are actually committed to fixing this, we will follow the evidence of what works, follow it, be innovative, be creative but follow the evidence of what works and we will all work together to fix this so that every single child has access to a great public education, not by chance, not by privilege but by right. In response to this problem, many reformers, including Geoffrey Canada, have tried to look for solutions. We're here at the site of our education nation summit launching today at NBC News and MSNBC. endobj It's about those kids. SCARBOROUGH: Last in, first out. They have to go see this movie and have smaller conversations like this. You went into the lottery system for your daughter. Randi was talking about instead of focusing on bad teachers, focusing on good teachers. That's not the case with all charter schools across America. He's a Grammy award winning songwriter. But can we really get Geoffrey Canadas in every public high school across America?