Waiting for Superman Notes

Narrator is lucky because his kids get to go to a private school, other parents put their kids in a lottery to get into a good school. One kid lost his dad at a young age, all the kids that talk seem to want to learn. Teachers are trying to teach them. Little girl, daisy, wants to be a veterinarian. Everyone is trying to fix the education but fails. Money problem. Reading and Math scores have flatlined since 1971. Third largest overcorweded school, guarded by a desk and a security guard. Bianca's mother will do whatever she has to do to make her daughter able to go to college. Bush started the no child left behind and they started measuring children's basic education. Many states half less than a third of their students profficient in math, same wiht reading. worst skills for reading are in Washington DC. By the time daisy leaves middleschool only 13% of students will be profficient in math. Only 3 out of 100 students will graduate from her highschool with the ability to be admitted to a four year college. Over 2,000 droppout factories, elementary and middleschools send ill prepared students to highschool. People think that neighborhoods fail because the schools fail. 68% of inmates in pennsylvania are highschool dropouts. DC public schools have everything wrong with them. 2007 Michelle Reid began to try to fix the DC school district. She is the seventh superintendent of the DC schools in 10 years. There are over 14,000 autonomous school boards. The governement sets schools guidelines but then states set their own and they conflict. Studies show and parents believe that it all comes down to a good teacher. Students with high performing teachers progress almost 3 times as fast as a low performing teacher. A student took a video of teachers and students doing bad stuff in school. Public school teachers get atomatic tenure. Even horrible teachers are gaurenteed their jobs no matter what they do. NEA and TFK have given the most money to politics, 90% are democrat, to help the education system. People aren't allowed to talk about teacher unions. A ton of forms and deadlines required to fire a teacher and if they aren't met you must wait another year. Teachers say their biggest obstacle to real reform is the contract with the teacher union. In dysfunctional systems you see good people do weird things- dance of the lemons. Each principal tries to get rid of the bad teachers to a different school and they hope to get better teachers. New York has to pay teacher for 3 years while they are under trial even when they aren't working. Only 38 school districts in Illionois were able to fire a teacher, only 1 in 2500 teachers lose their credentials. In the 90s some communities began to all teachers to create charter schools. Schools must hold a lottery for limited space. Michelle Reid is goin to close many public schools and fire many teachers and principals. Only 1 in 5 charter school produce great results. Up until the 1970s American public schools were the best in the world. Since then the US has fallen into the 25 slot in the world. Americans rate #1 in confidence. Not all schools in fancy neighborhoods are very good. Some colleges have to remediate 50% of the freshmen to prepare them for college courses. 50 years agi the system of tracking was a good thing because they needed certain people for certain jobs, now schools haven't changed bu the rest of the workd has. Bill Gates testified before congress to try and fix the schools. There is an education gap between rich and poor children and nothing has changed it. One teacher realized her students could't remember the terms so she made rap songs out of them for the students. The top charter school are sending over 90% of their students on to 4 year colleges. KIPP Academy was named the highest performing middle school. Now there are 82 KIPP schools. Students at KIPP do better then everyone and shatter the myth about poor kids being unable to learn. Reid is trying to make a new contract with the teachers union, proposed that they can keep tenure or give it up and get more pay. Her proposal was rejected before they could even vote on it. It takes a lot of outrage and good examples to change the status quote.