Where are you Superman?

Waiting for Superman
Directed by Davis Guggenheim
(Paramount Vantage, 2010, 102 minutes)

''What we're against is proposals that divide people''.  So says Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, in response to a proposal from Washington D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.  Rhee's controversial idea was to give teachers a choice between retaining their unrivalled job security and a modest pay rise, or forgoing it for the chance to earn dramatically higher wages based on performance.  As Davis Guggenheim, director and narrator of Waiting for Superman, tells us, local union leaders were so threatened by Rhee's proposal that they refused to allow their members to vote on it.

Guggenheim, director of Al Gore's global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, is not exactly a fire-breathing conservative.  He was also responsible for Barack Obama's 2008 Democratic National Convention biographical film and his 30-minute television campaign advertorial.  But with Waiting for Superman, this director could hardly have delivered a more stunning indictment of education bureaucrats, teachers unions and, by extension, the Democratic Party.

Jonathan Alter of Newsweek (who wrote a flattering biography of Franklin Roosevelt and is generally sympathetic to Democratic presidents) says in the documentary that ''teachers unions are a menace'', and that the national Democratic Party is their ''wholly-owned subsidiary.''

Waiting for Superman combines devastating survey data and examination scores with an often emotional portrayal of five young Americans whose local schools are failing them, to paint a bleak picture of US public schools.

Since 1971, spending per student on education in the United States has increased from $4,300 to $9,000 in inflation-adjusted terms.  At the same time, test scores of American students have stagnated while the rest of the world surged ahead.  The proportion of American students judged ''proficient'' in reading and maths for their year level is appallingly low -- less than 40 per cent in most states, and as little as 12 per cent in the worst educational districts like Washington D.C.

The system of granting ''tenure'' -- which effectively guarantees a teacher's job for life -- as well as staunch resistance from unions to merit-based pay come under heavy fire in the movie.  In just one example of the damage inflicted by tenure, the state of Illinois has had only 38 school districts out of 876 ever successfully fire a tenured teacher.  Compared to other professions -- where one in fifty-six doctors and one in ninety-seven lawyers lose their right to practise, just one in every two and a half thousand teachers ever lose their jobs.

The challenges of firing incompetent or negligent teachers were demonstrated by New York State's notorious ''rubber room'', where more than 600 tenured teachers awaited disciplinary hearings on their full salaries and benefits.  In these fiscally-straitened times and at a cost of more than $100 million annually to taxpayers, the rubber room highlights the threat posed by education unions not just to quality education, but also to the fiscal solvency of state governments.

Statistics like these are particularly galling when considered against testimony from experts interviewed in the film.  One argues that the effect of sacking just the worst 6-10 per cent of teachers and replacing them with merely average ones would catapult the United States to the top of educational world rankings.

Waiting for Superman, however, is not all doom and gloom.  Against this depressing backdrop, the film also profiles educational entrepreneurs who offer some hope for American students from low-income backgrounds.

Geoffrey Canada is one such visionary.  Himself a product of a rough neighbourhood and raised by a single mother, he set out to reform education in the United States first as a teacher, then as an educational consultant.  But frustrated by continual barriers put up by education bureaucrats, and an unwillingness to tackle the problems caused by union obstinacy, Canada took charge of the Harlem Children's Zone, an all-encompassing social-welfare charity that includes charter schools.

Each of the children profiled in the film have applied for a charter school like Harlem Success Academy, one of seven charter schools in New York run by the Success Charter Network.  Charter School network KIPP (''Knowledge is Power''), also profiled in the documentary, now includes 99 schools which span across 20 states and Washington D.C.  Another, SEED in Washington D.C, was the first charter to open an urban boarding school.  All are hugely successful, and as a result demand for places far exceeds what they are able to offer.  Charter school legislation in the United States requires oversubscribed schools to hold a public lottery to select their students.

This process sets up the final shattering scenes of the movie, as each of the children learns their fate:  will their number be drawn out of the lottery, meaning they are accepted into an outstanding charter school, or will they be consigned to their local ''dropout factory''?

Although the film has generally been well received, it is has not been without criticisms.  Aside from what you would expect from vested interests, the strongest charge against Waiting for Superman is that it is light on solutions.  To an extent, this is true.  While the movie does an excellent job describing the problems the American education system faces, it resists being bogged down in the policy detail of potential solutions.  In just one example of this oversight, school vouchers -- a popular tool for facilitating school choice worldwide -- are not mentioned once in the movie.

Yet the villains and heroes in this story are made abundantly clear.  Solutions follow logically.  Unions who protect failing teachers at all costs, resist merit-pay and stifle innovation through their political patronage must be weakened.  Educational entrepreneurs who are building excellent schools need to be supported, freed from red-tape and left alone to do their work.

The film also trumpets an important finding from the data of successful charter schools:  the achievement gap can be bridged.  For years, many academics in the education field believed it was impossible, or at least extremely difficult to get the same results from kids from disadvantaged backgrounds as you could get from students from privileged upbringings.  Yet the best charter schools have demonstrated, that in just a few years, they can transform students who previously tested at the lowest levels of academic achievement to the highest.

It certainly isn't easy -- requiring longer school hours, highly paid and highly competent teachers, lofty expectations and an unapologetic focus on college as an end goal.  But what it does prove is that there is nothing inherently wrong with the children, just the system that adults are responsible for designing and running.

Some commentators have been quick to argue that the film offers limited valuable lessons for the Australian education system.  It may be true that it doesn't suffer from as many chronically underperforming schools as the United States, and educational choice is facilitated by generous government funding to private schools.  But we would be kidding ourselves if we think that our schools are immune from the problems facing the United States.  Perhaps the public availability of NAPLAN test data will influence Australian perception of school performance over the next few years.

An interesting post-script to the film is the fate of the hard-charging D.C Schools Commissioner Michelle Rhee.  Rhee, a Democrat, resigned from her office after the mayor that appointed her, Adrian Fenty, lost a hotly contested Democratic primary.  Fenty's opponent was heavily backed by the American Federation of Teachers, who spent more than $1 million in an effort to defeat the pro-reform mayor.

Since resigning, Rhee has founded Students First, a nationwide political advocacy group that aims to raise $1 billion to run campaigns in favour of education reform, and to counteract the influence of teachers' unions.  Rhee has also been working with Republican governors across the country who want to tap her expertise.

This underlines a political realignment currently taking place in the United States.  Many ideologically liberal activists and even Democratic Party officials are lining up closely with conservative educators who have long argued for expanded choice and reducing the role of the state in the provision of education.  Minority community leaders like Geoffrey Canada are articulating the message that, by not tackling vested interests in education, Democrats are failing to address the poverty cycle that engulfs the low-income and ethnic minority voters they claim to represent.  A film like Waiting for Superman by Davis Guggenheim, with his impeccable liberal pedigree, can only spur this realignment.