Teachers who have seen "Waiting for Superman" - the documentary about the U.S. public education system - have many things to say about the film, which touches on such issues as charter schools, teacher's unions, tenure, all while following the educational lives of several different students around the country.
In a couple of previous posts, I spoke to Minnesota Principal Carol Markham-Cousins and Los Angeles Principal Donald S. Wilson to get their thoughts on the film. Now, Principal Paige Tracy of Arbor Ridge K-8 School in Orlando, Florida voices her opinions.
Q: What did you think of the film?
Tracy: I liked the film very much. I felt that it was done fairly and I did not think its intent was to negatively bash public schools across the country. It was more bringing about awareness of things public schools are lacking that would set students up for greater success. In order to have these critical elements in place, it's a matter of more funding from the federal government and more flexibility within school districts without being bound by teachers unions.
Q: Ah, the union. It was completely vilified in the film. Do you agree with its portrayal?
Tracy: Pretty much yes. We as school leaders are so bound by what we can or cannot do, when it comes to poor teaching performance in the classroom. I understood the lemon dance the film presented. That was an accurate portrayal.
Q: What about charter schools. They were portrayed as the answer to many problems in the public education system. Was that an accurate portrayal?
Tracy: The way I saw it was not so much that the film saw charter schools as the answer, but that it portrayed charter schools as having those things in place that public school don't have. Charters schools aren't bound by teacher contacts and teacher unions and different levels of funding.
Q: Was there anything you felt the film should have touched on, but didn't?
Tracy: I would have to say, maybe showing the things that public schools are doing well at and are doing right - even without all of the extras we aren't privileged to have like the charter schools have. There are so many success stories and so many other success rates going on. Maybe just pointing out some more positive things about public schools. Even though we are limited with out funding, with our flexibility, with our tight contracts, with our teacher unions, even though our hands are tied with so may things - we're able to overcome and do so many things well and do so many things right.
Q: Why has the quality of U.S. education fallen so badly in the last 40 years?
Tracy: One serious problem is the lack of follow up and support form the home environment. We get the students for six and half , seven hours a day, but there is so much that needs to go on beyond the school day. Often there is nothing going on (at home in terms of follow-up by the parents) between the end of one school day and the beginning of another. We lose them until they come back again the next morning to start all over again.
Q: So what does a principal do?
Tracy: I would want to address it with the parents. It takes getting them to believe and value education, to realize what needs to take place at home beyond the school day. It has to start with the parents being educated first. If there are less and less parents becoming educated themselves, when their own children come to school, they don't have a value for education.
Q: What is the key to an effective teacher?
Tracy: The teacher has to truly care about student learning. A teacher has to be passionate about whether or not every single student in his or her classroom is learning. First comes the caring, then comes the belief that every single student can learn, and then having a high expectation for every single learner.
Q: What are you thoughts on tenure?
Tracy: I don't believe in tenure. Quite honestly there are teachers - and I've had them in my experience - who should not be in the classroom teaching, but it would take an act of Congress to get removed form the classroom.
Q: What do you do in that case?
Tracy: You saturate that teacher with all kinds of training and workshops and staff developments. I send every available support person that I have in the school and send them in to the classroom where it's needed. It might be with classroom management, it might be with reading, it might be more about the teacher needing more time to teach and not spend time managing behaviors. I provide a great deal of support.
Q: Does it work?
Tracy: I've seen all of it work, I've seen some of it work and I've seen it none of it work.
Q: If you could meet anyone from the film, who would it be?
Tracy: I would want to meet Anthony, the 5th grader from Washington D.C.. I would want to know how things are going for him at the SEED charter school. Out of all of the students at we followed, for some reason, his was the one that just stuck with me, more than anybody else. I wanted him to achieve his goals and really get what he was going after. In one statement to the narrator when he was interviewed, he said: 'I just want to go to school.' That just clutched at my heart and it never left me. He said it from the heart and with such passion. I was really pulling for him.
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Richard Whitmire: The 'Superman' Snub
In the South Bronx, NY, the teachers are unionized and their students perform poorly.
In Ridgewood, NJ, the teachers are unionized and their students perform well.
In Newark, NJ, the teachers are unionized and their students perform poorly.
In Newton, MA, the teachers are unionized and their students perform well.
In South Boston, MA, the teachers are unionized and their students perform poorly.
See a pattern here? You can't separate the student from everything else in their life. The teachers and their union are NOT to blame, or credit, 100%, for the performance of their students, in affluent or indigent districts.
If you took all of the unionized teachers in the Beverly Hills school system, and had them trade places with all of the unionized teachers in the Compton school system, I think the gap between student performance in both of those school systems would be virtually the same.
But if the main problem with American public schools is "unionized teachers" then why hasn't unionization ruined ALL schools with a unionized faculty?
Do you think that vilifying the teacher's union might be more about serving a conservative ideological agenda then it is a genuine desire to improve education?
That is failure.
Getting a kid to graduation day -- with the bare minimum passing grades -- is a fair, standardized test of the system. I'm sure all teachers can agree on that.
Forget about high quality teaching and creative use of research-based strategies -- the present teacher workforce has failed to even deliver the basics and keep kids engaged.
This is failure, and the consequences will be disastrous. This is an emergency and we need big changes in our schools now.
Think they have know everything and they are so wonderful. Seen reform after reform. What happens?
Reform flop after reform flop. Guess what? The principals with all their fine ambitions are dumped.
So before becoming so self righteous and self important, I suggest you open your eyes. There is always someone to replace you, especially in this new business run competitive school environment.
The Orange County Public School contract is posted here:
https://www.ocps.net/es/laborrelations/bargaining/Documents/CTA%20contract%2009-10%20-%20Ratified%205-7-2010.pdf
The Florida State rules for Education, including K-12, are posted here:
http://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2010/Title48/#Title48
Chapter 1012, especially 1012.33 and 1012.34, cover the details. Honestly, it just defines a due process system. The administration has the option of transferring a teacher to another school. If the "lemon dance" is performed, it is simply because the administrator does not wish to follow through with the system. What a wonderful thought! Imagine this, "I am an administrator with a teacher I think is bad. I can transfer them to continue to "harm" other students but not mine, or I can do my job and see to their elimination. Hmmmm"
"I don't believe in tenure. Quite honestly there are teachers - and I've had them in my experience - who should not be in the classroom teaching, but it would take an act of Congress to get removed form the classroom."
It's easy for folks to argue these issues in the abstract. This principal, however, is telling the hard truth and speaking from direct experience.
We need big changes in the way we do schooling, and we need them NOW.
Listen lady, I have been a teacher for 10 years, and I have seen effective administrators get rid of bad tenured teachers. If you can't do it in an anti-union state like Florida where I am SURE the tenure laws or rules are more relaxed than here in Michigan-the home of the "strong union" then it speaks more to your ability as an administrator than the fairness of tenure.
You get some things right about the problems with education follow-up not happening at home.Wish you would get your head on straight about tenure. At one time, YOU were a tenured teacher, and it is a rare case where those due process rights did not help you out somehow.
Relatively little has trickled down to the teachers in the form of pay raises, especially over the last decade or two.
Under No Child Left Behind, the federal gov't allocated a 20% increase in its title I funding to pay for additional costs. As flawed as elements of NCLB, it has brought an awareness and focus on student performance that simply did not exist prior to the law. This is the reason, student testing has remained forefront through both Bush (with Kennedy and Miller's support) and now with Obama/Duncan. It works
So sad that after all these hours, on such an important social and political situation, there are so few comments.
HP, maybe you could move these kinds of articles to the political section to facilitate more conversation.
Here is a link to a NY Review on Waiting for Superman. Please route this to the Orlando Principal
you interviewed.
Just as Ebert retracted his review after learning more details about the W4S Documentary, perhaps,
the Orlando Public School Principal might rethink and retract some of her remarks. Thank you for your article, Zorianna.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/myth-charter-schools/
I can't find any retraction by Roger Ebert. On his website, he still has the entry as posted. It is here:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100929/REVIEWS/100929981
Also, on his website, he lists Waiting for "Superman" in his top documentaries for 2010.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/01/the_best_documentaries_of_2010.html#more
I see mention by blogs that he retracted his opinion in a Twitter tweet, but I cannot find mention of that officially by Roger Ebert.
I also do not know if this is what you intended, but the link you posted to nybooks.com is a story about Locke High School in Los Angeles, and is not about Waiting for "Superman". I believe the link that you want is as follows:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/
You can check that and confirm. Diane Ravitch's critique is worth reading.
Your statement will hopefully be ignored due to its incoherence.
If unions are the source of all evil and failure in the school system how is it that extremely high achieving countries like Finland have incredibly strong unions? Even within the US states like Massachusetts (that have strong unions) have much better scholastic success than states with weak unions like Georgia.
He has never taken one course on how to BE a teacher. In his first year he was audited once a month by administration during class time and had a mentor he met with at least weekly.
He does read books on teaching techniques but, to my knowledge, has never attended a workshop on how to teach. So in other words he is training himself.
Teachers and administrators lament the lack of valuing education by parents. I lament the lack of valuing the art of teaching by our education system, and their lack of attention to this area.
I do not understand why this is not a national standard being pursued by the teachers union.