Being an education major, I try to stay up-to-date with all of the education news and the like. So, when a movie on various children in the United States and the educational system came out, I was extremely excited to see it. Last week (February 15th), a movie called Waiting for Superman came out. The documentary follows several children from various parts of the country and their struggles to attend to a good school. You see, all of the children are set to attend an under-performing school if they don’t get into a charter school. A charter school receives federal funding, yet it has different standards and rules. There are lotteries at each of these charter schools to decide which students get to attend them. Each of the children in the movie are in these low percentage likelihood draws. Some of the children get into their charter school. Some do not.
I thought this was a very interesting movie. I felt for every single student on the movie. However, I’m still undecided how I feel about charter schools. I mean they have longer days/weeks than the average school and they tend to run things differently. Granted, they are getting high test scores from children at these schools. However, they are getting federal funding for the schools and not every child can attend them because only so many are allowed in.
I think this movie does a great job of highlighting some of the issues of the educational system in the United States. It does feel like we are waiting for Superman to save the schools and the children. However, the movie does give you hope that things will change for the better some day.
So, my fine readers… what do you think about these charter schools? Did your or do your children attend a public, charter, or private school? I attended a public school myself and I have felt prepared for college. However, I know that not everyone is so lucky.
Disclosure: I received a free copy of Waiting for Superman for review purposes. No compensation was received. The opinions expressed are my own.
Up until I graduated from high school, I attended only non-charter public schools, save for one year of homeschooling. (I’m now attending a private university, which luckily I was quite well prepared for.) While I was young, though, my mother started teaching at a charter school, which my younger brother and sister attended, and where she continues teaching today. Like Lindsay here, my own thoughts on charter schools are pretty mixed and inconclusive.
Largely, however, I felt that any sort of solid message that Waiting for Superman could have made about charter schools or other issues was obscured by numerous faults, inaccuracies, misrepresentations and hyperbole in the film. If you’d like to see the problems I noticed, please follow the link below. (There definitely isn’t room for all of them here.)