Waiting for Superman and SB 6

Davis Guggenheim's recent documentary Waiting for Superman provides an excellent "statement of the problem" concerning the present state of public education in America.  The film will no doubt serve as a constant referent in education policy debates for years to come, and it will probably be invoked to justify various (even competing) agendas--just like 1912 newspaper accounts of the scene of the Titanic's sinking were used to justify Anglo-Saxon heroism but also to support allocations of elitism).  This is because the movie names and appeals so strongly to a common desire to improve public education, and yet, it also points out positive and negative aspects of various agents/entities involved.  In other words, teachers are the movie's heros but they are also its greatest villains (eg., teacher unions, apathetic teachers, etc.); American kids are portrayed as ambitious if not bright, but they're also shown to be cocky and/or stupid at times.  Politically, the film could be used as "evidence" in any number of cases, depending on which part of the movie was being referenced.

Waiting for Superman changed my mind about one issue relevant to SB 6.  While I am a vehement supporter of tenure in higher education on the basis of academic freedom, the film it very clear that tenure for K-12 teachers is very different from university tenure.  Unlike college professors, K-12 teachers are typically granted tenure very quickly without having to show a high level of accomplishment and promise.  Moreover, tenure in K-12 doesn't seem to have much to do with academic freedom: there are no research requirements and the curriculum is generally predetermined and invariable.  One of the most shocking scene's of the film comes when the D.C. superintendent proposes a plan that would do away with K-12 tenure but enable "highly effective" teachers to earn a solid six-figure income.  The teachers of D.C., however, stage a protest by refusing to even cast a vote of the proposal.  The proposal disappears.  This moment of the movie acted as a "punctum," propelling me to my memories of the status quo, mediocre, "CYA!" demeanor that overshadowed my experience of teaching in a Florida public high school.  That demeanor--which pervaded the school and rubbed off on the students--was bar none the worst aspect of the experience, therefore I think a move toward a merit-based form of teacher pay is necessary.  And since K-12 tenure isn't really predicated on merit or academic freedom, its elimination is an entirely different matter than tenure in higher education.  In fact, if the elimination of K-12 tenure creates the conditions for a true meritocracy, then K-12 without tenure would be more like the highly competitive, accomplishment-oriented system of tenure in higher education.  

Of course, the big question still remains: how do you measure quality when it comes to teaching?  With a merit-based pay scale, the answer to this question has even greater stakes and consequences.  With an major incentive to be measured as "highly effective," those who are highly motivated to become the best in the profession must use the established measurement criteria as their guide to the top.  If the measure is FCAT scores, the best teachers (who would likely be the best teachers in any given evaluation system) will generally strive, above all else, to maximize their students' test scores.  And yet, the measure (once it becomes a meritocracy) will not only guide the best teachers--it will also guide the teaching profession, such that the very idea and activity of teaching will rapidly transform.  (Indeed, we can already see if we compare the best private school teacher with the best public school teachers: their teaching philosophies/styles are extremely different and will continue to be as public schools become more and more engrossed by standardized testing as their primary measure.)    

A formal/aesthetic observation: the film is premised on the animation of education statistics.  We see this in two ways:

(1) the arch of its narrative follows five real kids who hope to be accepted (via lottery) to better public schools--and the screen is constantly flooded with national statistics of very processes being lived through by these five kids (so we see the plain statistics, but we see them at precise moments when we are very emotionally invested in the kids' chances of accessing that better education--in this way, the statistics become animated through our interested in these kids by virtue the narrative);

(2) the personal narrative arch is occasionally interrupted by computer-animated sequences that display (inter)national statistics dealing with reading/math levels, teacher unions, and the cost of schools vs. the cost of prisons.

Obviously statistics and data are at the core of FCAT and the policy debates that surround it.  In this sense, Waiting for Superman's animation aesthetic provides a useful formal/tale relay for my project.