Message Board

Being a daughter of a former 30-year school board member in an urban area, I believe one of the biggest problems our public schools have is the teachers union. Do we ever hear outcry from the unions about what is happening to the children in so many non-performing schools -- NO! It's all about power -- keep them dumb, keep them poor, keep US (the union) in power!

When is this coming to Minneapolis? (power to the parents!)

An effort should be made to clearly show the performance of each school and do it in a way that is available to parents and community members. We need to be better informed selectors of schools. There are great public, charter, and private schools. There are bad public, charter, and private schools. It isn't about how the school operates, its about how well they do serving students. Of course, parental choice is the key and parental knowledge is the power.

My two daughters are enrolled in an outstanding charter school in North Carolina.
The lottery process is heartbreaking. It doesn't take away the unfairness, it just depersonalizes it. Even though we're in an affluent area with well-regarded public schools, each spot in the charter school is sought after by many, many kids and parents.
Charter schools have an incentive to do well because they will go out of business if parents take their kids out OR kids don't achieve. Good, confident teachers are attracted because they are usually given more autonomy and their excellence is highly valued, even though they have less job security.
I'm reluctant to disparage public school teachers; many of them do a tough job with dedication and excellence. But the public school system, like any monopoly, runs the risk of becoming arrogant and bloated. In my own experience, as well as in the movie, parents' clear preference is for alternatives like charter schools.

Education begins AT HOME. My mother taught me how to read, not some school. Most people I know had it the same. It's bad enough that our society pours money down the drain trying to correct the negative values and lack of skills that are instilled in these kids, but now you want us to pony up more money? For what?
Why dont you make a movie about the GIFTED children in our society, who are made to suffer through the mediocrity of our schools. Children who could make a difference by contributing something worthwhile to our society if they were only given a chance.
Face the facts that are published in the census: high teenage birth rates, high rate of unwed (single-mother) childbirth among African-American women. Then read the correlation between these facts and POVERTY. Why not address the root cause of the problem, which is a lack of responsibility by the individuals who have the children and perpetuate the cycle of poverty??
There's certainly a lack of learning in the home if the kids cant even read by the time they're in fourth grade. Where is the film addressing these basic facts that are published by the US Government?
Stop trying to make it OUR problem when it's THEIR problem. EDUCATION BEGINS AT HOME.

I see here the makings of a fine film, but unfortunately there are many, many traps to fall into in the education-environment. Public schools with unionized teachers are quite capable of providing an excellent education, or they can be catastrophic wrecks. Likewise, charter schools can be excellent, or similar catastrophic wrecks. While it is sometimes useful to believe that greed, politics, and rampant self-interest can destroy any school system, it is always more interesting to fix the problem. And the problem isn't always "government", or school boards, or unions, or teachers, or power-plays. Although one real problem is that anyone who controls public funds draws the attention of everyone who has a desire to spend those funds, creating an opportunity for dishonesty.

It was Napolean who said: "Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence." In some cases there is malice and conspiracy in education, but in many more cases the people involved do not know how to fix the problems they face. Randomly changing from one group of incompetent leadership to another is a poor way to address this problem. If the expectation is that a charter school will always be better than a public school, this represents the misguided belief that the people who run the charter school are somehow "better" than their public-school counterparts. They are often less jaded as a result of being less experienced, but rarely "better". Sometimes they're just better salesmen, but other times a new group of people really has an exciting new answer.

In cases where malice does exist, the problem will always be the people who are willing to distort those organizations and positions in order to achieve power, money, or control. All this is done at the expense of the children who SHOULD be the very first consideration of any school. The real crime here is when rampant self-interest has destroyed a school-system's ability to fulfil its primary purpose of education.

I've seen school systems that work, and I've seen school systems that don't, and they don't obey any simplistic model of "private" versus "charter" versus "public". Schools work when the people running those schools (including the parents, and even the students) decide they will, and work hard to make it happen. People who don't want to work at making schools functional are the real problem in dysfunctional schools. We all need to stop shouting at the wind and start doing things that make a difference. (And yes, the film sounds like a great start. Thanks for opening the discussion.)