The Lottery Makes a Strong Statement About Charter Schools
Madeleine Sackler is no Michael Moore.
The documentary filmmaker felt the urge to tell both sides behind the charter school debate, the subject of her new feature The Lottery.
Only one side wasn’t talking.
“I thought it was really important as a documentary filmmaker to try to capture all perspectives,” Sackler says.
So the filmmaker sought out the school union members who slam the charter school model and tried to shoot footage inside some public school buildings.
Nothing doing.
The sources claimed they didn’t have time to speak to her for the film even though she tried repeatedly over the course of an entire year to let them defend themselves. And the few folks who agreed to speak to her from the union perspective, like families opposed to charter schools, never showed up at the appointed time, she says.
“You have a choice as a filmmaker. Either stop making the movie or make the movie you have access to,” she says.
The Lottery proves the forces behind the charter school movement are only too proud to share their educational story. The film follows four families who apply to a lottery for the chance to enroll at Harlem Success Academy, an elementary school where students are expected to thrive — and typically do.
Audiences get to know four sweet-faced children and the parents who pray they won’t have to enter the public school system, a portrait in underachievement.
The film details the sorry statistics of union-fueled schools and, more importantly, reveals how desperate many urban parents are to flee them. The Lottery winners get no cash reward for their troubles. They simply get the chance to enroll their children in a school which will give them a greater chance to thrive later in life.
The Lottery will be viewed by some as partisan reportage, especially given the conservative position on school choice. Variety’s John Anderson calls the film “advocacy to the point of propaganda” – a charge critics rarely level at the aforementioned Moore.
Sackler begs to differ.
“It’s political but not partisan,” she says. “Of all the interviewees in the film, almost all are Democrats, which was in no way intentional.”
The charter school debate is evolving, she says, leaving ideological name tags behind.
The education Unions should be classified as a criminal endeavor and outlawed across America. As a former 40 yr resident of Detroit, I can say w/o hesitation the education Unions are the most destructive force, indeed a cancer, destroying American society. The Michigan Education Assoc. has destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives as they passed children “Up the ladder” from one grade to the next and all the while the kids can’t read or write or spell or perform basic math functions. And yet, EVERY August, just weeks before school is set to begin, the MEA calls a strike for one reason or another …. and its never about the children or their education needs. The parents of inner-city children are screaming for help. And all the while the Democrats protect them and then act like they have the children’s best interest at heart. And sooner or later Obama will be peddling more bs to the nation about the need for more education funding.
Another documentary on education, The Cartel, is well-worth viewing.
I was disgusted by how much money my union spent on campaign literature being sent to my school throughout the election. And I am forced to pay dues. While I appreciate the benefits of the union, I have a problem with them where the money goes.
Wow, Madeleine Sackler really not like Michael Moore if she’s actually being objective and trying to get both sides of the issue.
From what I read, her film centers on schools in Harlem, N.Y., and it sounds like a real strong case for charter schools. Hopefully this will earn a major award so people can really take notice of this issue and especially of school unions.
Great column!
Defunding the failure using school choice is the only option at this point. The public schools will underperform due to what Hayek and others told us about the tendency of government to grow and become less accountable and more wasteful.
Choice. I’m pro-choice, pro-school choice.
A problem our lottery school is that there’s typically back doors for high donors and government bureaucrats. And I don’t know what our public school budget per child is, but the Montessori charter here only gets $4,000 per student. So the parents are expected to be involved in fundraisers and other support. Nevertheless, it’s worth it.
But I thought the solution to the whole education problem was just throwing more money at it. . . . . you mean there are actually teachers, administraters, and school board members who arent worth a crap? Shocking!! I feel for those parents who want the chance to give their kids a good education, but I have to ask: how many of them vote a straight democratic ticket, and would NEVER consider voting for a Republican or Independent? Here is the “hope and change” you wanted. . . .
She did state that most of the interviewees were democrats, although that wasn’t planned. So that’s an interesting point. I think it’s time for people on all sides to hold their officials accountable. As a block, the voters in Harlem, or any urban area, could probably make or break a politician, especially if the various areas coordinated. School choice could be within their grasp, if they’d pull together and demand more of their elected representatives.
I think this is partly why the Tea Party movement is so scary to a lot of people- for the first time in a long while you have people coordinated and saying- do as we say, not as you want, or we’ll boot your butt out of office (Obama was coordinated, but it was more of a ‘Save us! Please, just Save Us!’, which is a giving up of power, not a use of it).
I going to hack some people off with this next part- but I have friends and family, including my mother, who are teachers in the public school system. At one side, yes, the various unions, especially at the national level, have become self-protecting beuracracies. Some of the local chapters do serve their original purpose though, working on ensuring good working conditions and fair pay for teachers to be able to focus on teaching- So, I’m not sure complete union busting is a good thing (simplfying employment rules and making it easier to get rid of non-performers I’m all for!).
I do think though, that same as the parents, the teachers of the caliber and attitude I know need to actually be involved in the union, and not think of it as dues you have to pay (it’s closed shop, so they don’t have a choice, and many just want to do their jobs and stay out of the politics, which can be uglier inside than what we see on the outside). Hopefully, there will be an upswing in dissatisfaction by teachers who actually care.
I do think that a lot of federal and state law probably needs to be scrapped an rewritten in a simpler manner. Certain laws allow parents to make incredible demands on schools when you get into access issues, and especially now that total inclusion (i.e., putting the severely mentally and usually physically handicapped into regular class rooms) is a fad. Yes, parents involved in public schools have a right to demand access, but federal law can and does allow savvy parents to demand accomodation far and above what is actually needed (it’d be like parents of average students demanding the latest tweaked out laptops and ergonomically designed easy chairs for their kids, instead of a computer lab and standard desks), and the schools have to comply or lose federal funding.
Other laws can defund schools that actually bring their performance levels up based on the premise that if they’re working better, they must not need the resources anymore (there isn’t an objective review process, just a resource allocation based on test scores). This usually eventually kills the programs that were working, starting a slow slide until they get the resources back.
All in all, the whole system has issues, and it’s larger than charter schools and vouchers can fix.
HR, generally agree with your comment about “most” teachers not wanting to get involved in the dirty business of running their local unions. And that could be their Achilles Heel. If they don’t work together to clean up the NEA, etc., from the bottom up, the public will do it for them. And the same goes for the SEIU and other public employee unions. Unless they wake up, dedicated and effective public workers will shortly be tarred by actions of the idiots now ruining their unions.
“The Lottery will be viewed by some as partisan reportage, especially given the conservative position on school choice. Variety’s John Anderson calls the film “advocacy to the point of propaganda” – a charge critics rarely level at the aforementioned Moore.”
Once again, as is so often the case, the ideologically driven media rears it’s ugly head. America has been mired in this propaganda swamp for far to long. Speaking for myself, an avid GMA, NPR, 60 Minutes, 20/20, etc. viewer for many years, it went largely un-noticed until Clinton/Lewinsky and the Bush/Gore 2000 election fiasco when it went on steroids to glorify the pompous and obvious light weight, Al Gore, destroy “no gravitas” George Bush, who “stole the election,” and finally reach it’s ultimate goal by glorifying and electing Barack Hussein Obama as the black messiah, “the one we’ve been waiting for.” This crowd has gone from a rut to a Grand Canyon sized ditch which I’m convinced will only be filled when John Anderson and his equally indoctrinated ilk die off. We should all hope and pray if you must, that their progeny will not follow in their boot steps.
Deconstructing the Teachers Union, adopting a market driven merit pay structure, exposing and eliminating historical revisionism in our schools curriculum and eliminating tenure would go a long way towards solving this problem. Charter schools are a step in that direction. We should not be surprised at the level of vehemence from the opposition; the Teachers union is deeply entrenched, has much to lose and their motivation has nothing to do with what’s best for our kids, a bogus claim they have no shame in trotting out whenever it suits their devious purposes.
First, you are all maroons.
:: ))
No disrespect I just had to get that out.
Second, please tell me how an entire public school system with its mandate to administer to the needs of everyone
can compete with an organization that
follows a marketing plan that excludes anyone they can’t help,
deliberately disguises itself as competition with a system that must not compete but must meet the need of all the citizenry,
and finally a private system that will never, ever have to meet the needs of the entire population.
How and why should we, the American people compare ourselves to an opportunistic, disingenuous fraud like Harlem Success?
Further, buried in your despicable attempt at objectivity is the standard campaign against the union, which begs the question in the original sense.
I am tempted to ask you if there were none of these ‘Problems’ that you claim originate with the Unions, would you still be for private schools?
But that is a waste of time because my main premise is the “problems” you maroons outline are there because of the public duty to educate everyone. Something your private school models are 180 degrees against as their objective is to do better than the rest of the population.
What sort of America do you really envision, a sort of feudal state?
Providing choice in schooling is the answer!! Choice causes competition, and forces all schools to offer a better product. Monopolies allow the “customer” to be the victim of the seller. Imaging if we had a monopoly for food – and since food is so vital to life (hint – it is) – food could only be sold at government stores. These stores would quickly resemble what existed in the former Soviet Union – or your local Dept. of Motor Vehicles!
So what if some of the schools “siphon off” students – if the schools get 1/2 of the funding that goes to public schools, it saves the taxpayers some money and it allows those students a chance to excel instead of being stuck in a system that teaches to the Lowest Common Denominator.
Czechoslovakia, immediately after it was freed from the Soviet tentacles, decided the only way to fix schools was to allow private choice – letting parents choose schools that would TEACH!! Sweden has also experimented with more school choice options.
The concern with unions is that unions, by their very charter – are aimed primarily at getting better pay and benefits for teachers, and protecting teachers from the “management” (and unhappy parents) – and being successful at teaching students comes in DEAD LAST as a priority! Why not eliminate tenure? Why not allow parents to vote on whether or not they want their students to be put into or kept out of a particular teacher’s classroom? You claim that the “..public duty [is] to educate everyone.” And yet our current system is costing 3 to 4 times more per student (adjusted for inflation) than 40 years ago, and the results are far worse than ever!! We are not getting what we are paying for!!!
Several conservative black commentators have indicated that if the KKK had sought to keep the blacks down, stupid, and dependent on Big Brother – they could not have created a more effective system of doing this than the present system …AND if the KKK forced a system like this on the minorities – they would revolt.
Walter Williams, another conservative black commentator and professor of economics states that a key indicator is how many teachers in public school systems opt out and send their own kids to private schools. Typically, the percent of teacher parents sending their own kids to private schools is about TWICE that of parents who aren’t teachers. Says something!! (Would you want to eat in a restaurant that the chief cook would not eat at??)
If we don’t fix our schools, we will be raising stupid, ignorant kids who rely on big government (and they will be liberals, because they are stupid) – but I suspect that is the goal of the teachers unions!!!
Mike, as a teacher, the only management I’m worried about needing protect from is my administrator. I do a good job with my students if the satisfaction expressed by my students and their parents is to believed. Unfortunately, I have been at odds with principals and assistant principals who have had a personal vendetta against me. Fortunately, parents and students have stepped up and supported me when faced with this situation. A young teacher is not tenured. If a school cn get a rid of a poor teacher before tenure is achieved, the teacher has not right to the job. However, in many systems, if the teacher is tenured (usually after two or three years) a principal can’t just fire the teacher. There is usually some sort of probationary period in which the teacher is observed, trained and re-evaluated. If the teacher makes standard, he or she gets to keep the position. The problem is that several administrators do not bother with jumping through the hoops and instead transfer ineffective teachers to other schools in the system. While the system is cumbersome and time consuming, there is a system to eliminate bad teachers. With teacher shortages being a problem, it makes sense to try to rehabilitate ineffective teachers. It only works when the efforts are made to rehabilitate them.
I think schools like the one in Harlem are successful because there is a clear mission that the whole school buys into. Everyone, parents, students, and educators, work toward a common goal. My fear is that with schools of choice can come schools of design. What is to keep a person from starting a school and then rejecting any student who might make the school look bad? If schools are truly equal access, I like the idea, and I would consider working in one, especially if it meant that every teacher in the building is as motivated and committed to seeing all of their students succeed as I am. A lottery is a fair system, albeit sad.
What’s a maroon?!
Seriously. You sound like an elected official who do nothing but praise the public school system and then send their kids to private schools.
Feel free to keep defending your position. Results, however, make your arguments pretty weak.
That’s why I sent my kids to Catholic school. They do more with less. But the main point is that almost all the parents are involved with the education process. One of my kids teachers left to teach in public school and while there are lots if bells and whistles she has access to there is little to no parent participation. At back to school night one or two parents attend vs nearly everyone in the Catholic school. Add some people’s attitude that school is for losers and. there is no incentive for the system to change. We needs to go back to basics in what the kids are taught. English. Math science. History civics and geography
Downie, thanks for gracing up with your presence you first-class idiot. You stick with the Unions and the idiots ruining public education and I’ll stick w/anyone else educating my children.
Uh, Downie, you DO realize the proper word is “morons”, right? Sounds kind of like you are a shill for the unions, or am I reading you wrong? The America I envision has quality education for all who want it and are willing to sacrifice to get it, wether in private school, or in public school. . .the sacrifice involves parents taking an interest and spending the time to be involved, and teachers who not only have the desire to teach, but the authority to discipline the unruly. . . I have NEVER seen a teacher’s union that gave a damn for the welfare of the students or the quality of their education. I invision a school system that is not top-heavy with overpaid bureaucrats intent on keeping their own power. The money wasted on redundant administration could be used to pay more teacher’s salaries and furnish needed supplies. I envision an educational system where teachers actually teach and social engineering and revisionist history is kicked to the curb. . . .do I need to go on?
As a parent (she turns 2 in December YAY!) I take the school choice debate very seriously. I want what’s best for my daughter. Sure, I’m going to do all I can to teach her at home but I’m not with her 24/7. An organized and well run educational environment means a lot to me and I’m going to do all I can to provide that for my daughter.
Does that mean private school? Maybe. A public charter school? Could be. Heck even home schooling is on the table. (My wife is a saint!) I went to public school but I’m from the middle of nowhere and that’s the only option we had. Parents will do what they can where they can.
For me the biggest thing I have against teachers unions is Tenure. I’m sorry I know it’s hard to even fire me from my union job, but it’s almost impossible to fire a tenured teacher! For crying out loud how can ANYONE defend tenure?
Let’s see; my school budget is being cut. I can fire a teacher making $80,000 a year and hire two new ones for $40K apiece. Why not?
Some observations….
First, there are already a lot of kids who are already badly damaged by inferior educations. This should not be surprising: many public schools have been horrible for a generation or two now. Examples:
a) I saw a girl on a game show asked to name any of the three ships that sailed with Columbus on his first voyage to the New World; her answer: the Titanic.
b) A man of about 30 in the same game show was told that there was a singing group featuring four men named John, Paul, George and Ringo and he was given four possible names for the group; his choice: The Village People.
c) Students in south Texas were asked what country was immediately south of them; while some got the right answer, others guessed Guatemala, Brazil and FRANCE!
Second, while the preceding examples are all from the US, I’ve seen similar things in other countries like Britain and Canada. America is NOT the only country with poor education.
Third, many school boards employ as many non-teachers as teachers. For instance, New York City apparently had a roughly 50-50 ratio between teachers and non-teachers. While there probably have to be SOME non-teachers – custodians, cafeteria staff, maybe a FEW administrators – surely the percentage of teachers should be MUCH higher than 50%!
Fourth, if it takes six YEARS to fire a teacher that has sexually harassed a student via email – and the emails still exist to prove it and have been proven to come from that teacher – there is something drastically wrong with the disciplinary system. While it is necessary for a fair process to be followed to ensure that no one is falsely accused – a teacher near here committed suicide after allegations of sexual impropriety by some female students were widely believed by virtually everyone; afterwards, the girls admitted that they’d made the whole thing up – surely no reasonable system takes SIX YEARS to do that.
Fifth, “mainstreaming” severely disabled children so that they are with normal kids sounds like a wonderful thing in theory. It seems like we are proving our good-heartedness and our determination to give the best possible education to every child, even if they have some major challenges. It might even make the normal kids more understanding about relating to children with disabilities. HOWEVER, it is not quite that cut and dried. I saw a documentary about a severely disabled girl in a wheelchair who had been mainstreamed and it was a mess. This poor girl could not speak a single intelligible word – her mother claimed to understand her but I couldn’t make out a single word even when her mother explained what she was saying – but she was screeching CONSTANTLY and LOUDLY throughout the class, including while the teacher was speaking. If I were one of her fellow students, I doubt I could have made out a single thing the teacher had said in that class. It was absurd beyond belief. Surely no reasonable person could have ever expected the disabled girl to have any kind of job – I couldn’t figure out how she could ever complete even a routine test – yet she’d been pushed into a class of kids who were perfectably capable of anything any ordinary person could do and simply drowned out anything that those kids might have hoped to learn. How was this a service to ANY of the children involved? How could this have been anything but an utter waste of time for the teacher – and hugely frustrating to boot.
Sixth, point five is why I agree – partly – with Downie. He/she is making a valid point. If a charter school can simply decline to teach the kids that are disabled or simply more challenging to teach, the public system is not operating on a level playing field and that simply isn’t fair. However, I haven’t heard any of the theorists describe how the “difficult” students would get handled by their approach. I can well imagine that non-public solutions would emerge. I can certainly imagine teachers that get special satisfaction from helping the most “difficult” students maximize the potential forming “special ed” schools and even having competing special ed schools. I don’t see why that would be particularly objectionable. It’s certainly got to be better than disrupting ALL students in a class for the sake of one that has almost no potential to need or use an education anyway.
Seventh, classroom discipline is getting appallingly bad. I’ve spoken to classroom teachers in grade schools in nice neighborhoods and they say that virtually every possible means of discipline is unavailable to them. It is routine now for students to tell teachers to “F*** off” whenever they feel like it. Corporal punishment, of course, has been forbidden for a long time now. Timeouts, standing in the corner, detentions, and other techniques apparently aren’t even tried any more; presumably because they don’t work any more. Apparently, the only recourse that teachers have is sending kids to the principal’s office where he gives them a suspension for two or three days. Apparently, it is not unusual for a significant number of kids to come back to school after completing their suspension, then deliberately act up at the first opportunity, then get re-suspended; some of these kids only spend a few minutes a week in school, the rest on suspension. When informed, many parents simply don’t care. And parents are denied most methods of discipline too! Their kids know the laws and threaten their parents with charges of child abuse if the parents discipline them. I don’t pretend to know how widespread this is – perhaps my sources are exaggerating? – but if this is anywhere near as common as it sounds, the whole country is in huge trouble. How will a child like this integrate with our society after he or she is finished school if they have missed most of their education through being suspended for disciplinary issues? Who would want to hire such a person? Who would want to work with one?
If this is the public school system, it is a horribly messed up system and needs a major reworking – NOW!
Ditto on that last point.
I worked as a substitute teacher for a while working through my Masters, and it was difficult for me to believe how much worse it was than when I was in high school – which was pretty bad in itself. It never failed when substituting that I’d have to send someone to the office, ’cause it’s not like you have any means of threatening them. One kid I sent to the office twice in a period of a couple days came back with the principle himself, who told me in no uncertain terms to no longer send belligerent students to him as many were reaching the point of expulsion from other teachers. Naturally, all hell broke loose as I had no means left to discipline them that they feared. What can you do, fail them? The students may not care but the staff will as they just want to get them on to the next grade. After all, the school is judged primarily on how many graduate; its quantity, not quality.
I don’t think there is a lack of good teachers, it’s a lack of good parents we need to worry about. There is no sense of responsibility in the parents, and the children inherit it from them. For example: I distinctly remember in the school marching band that more than half of the members were there because their parents believed that it was a free-ride to college. The students didn’t care; their parents didn’t push them, so they didn’t work. As far as they were concerned, their mere presence was supposed to be enough. Naturally the band sucked. There was no ambition so there was no drive. We have a population in this country that largely aspires to do nothing. Why work for something when I can have it handed to me? (There’s another subject…) Expand that to education as a whole and you get the basic gist of it.
Higher education fares no better. I was disgusted by a friend who showed me an article claiming that college was essential for a successful democracy. The author viewed those without higher education as sheep unable to discern the “truth;” further lamenting that more and more students attend college only as a stepping stone to future careers, rather than ‘bettering’ themselves. Sadly, this mindset is typical amongst colleges. The arrogance! I’ve known some pretty well-read people throughout my life who were still dumb as a post, as I’m sure most of you have, too. I’ve always felt that if there was to be an education reform, higher or lower, it needs to focus not on knowledge but wisdom; i.e., greater emphasis on history and English than math and science. Intellectuals (like our president was touted as) are so full of themselves they never see just how much of a jackass they really are.
I tremble to think what I will choose when I have kids, as I have no faith in our education system. I don’t know how I got away with it, but my old high school yearbook included a page with me comparing the experience to prison; you suffer through it, appreciating the little things that make the suffering a bit more bearable. Still, you get what you put in. Education will never improve until American families clean their act up and take some responsibility. Fixing education without fixing the children first is like putting sugar on crap: it’s still crap.
I worked for many years as a teacher in the New Haven Public Schools. There is a lottery for admission to what is considered the best elementary school in the city- the W. J. Hooker School. Many parents are under the impression (I believe correct) that the lottery is rigged. Lo and behold- who wins the lottery? Children of parents who are Yale faculty, children of parents who are New Haven Public School administrators and the otherwise well connected. Keep voting Democratic Party, they will take your vote for granted and perpetuate the exploitation of the poor, working, and middle class, especially the ethnic minorities of the city.
The main purpose of the unions is to maintain the leaderships power and position, anything else is secondary.
While I have no problem with choice, are charters necessarily better than public? The largest charter school evaluation was done by Stanford. They analyzed data from 2,403 schools and found that only 17% performed better than public schools. In fact 46% performed the same and %37 performed WORSE. All this with noting that typically charter schools enroll smaller numbers of high-needs students. They also have a high degree of attrition back to public schools (they don’t want the behavior problems or low performers).(Diane Ravitch in “No Bad Idea Left Behind”)
Why not help the public schools do a better job? Provide teachers and students with curriculum that will help them learn, rather than just teach to the standardized test. Superintendents come in with an agenda and make changes that aren’t in the best interest of the student. See what is happening in DC. Rhee is firing LOTS of ‘underperforming’ teachers (part of the evaluation is based on the teacher’s student’s ONE TIME test score). then they get fired and replaced with Teach for America teacher who have a 5 week training before taking over a classroom. Then they teach two years and leave. This is what is happening because it is CHEAPER! Yet Rhee can take money from “the children” for her own personal driver. It is happening all over the country but no one is aware of it.
Districts need to ask teachers, “What can we do together to help our schools?” But nobody ever asks the teachers on the front lines, what would help. Most of the people who make decisions have not been in the classroom for more than a few years and haven’t actually taught for a long time! Why do you think they are not teachers anymore?! Because it is a hard job with little appreciation. NCLB and Race to the Top will continue to dumb down our students. One positive is that charters have more freedom to do what they think is right, with no repurcussions.
Sorry for the rant.
For those suffering (and it is a serious affliction) from Looney Tunes Deprivation, “maroon” was a comedic take on calling someone a moron…”What a Maroon!”…by Bugs Bunny, and others.