By Scott Waldman Staff Writer
(From Times Union, October 22, 2010)
It is not a mere movie. It is a campaign, the launch of a ground war in public education.
The documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman,'” which explores the lives of children it portrays as let down by our public schools, will come to a local movie theater on Friday. Directed by Davis Guggenheim, whose “An Inconvenient Truth” earned $50 million at the box office and made climate change a kitchen table conversation across the nation, the movie has become a call to action for those in education reform.
On Wednesday, 2,250 charter school students, parents and educators packed the Palace Theatre for a special screening of the movie, sponsored by the Brighter Choice Foundation, which supports 11 charter schools in Albany. The screening audience was one of the biggest in the nation, according to Brighter Choice officials who asked the film’s producers to show the movie here because Albany has such a high number of the publicly funded, privately run schools.
The movie follows several young children enduring a charter admissions lottery, complete with spinning numbered balls, as their last chance at an education better than the dysfunctional public schools near their homes. The film’s villains are clearly the teacher’s unions, their resistance to any sort of change and the deadbeat educators they protect.
Read a review of the movie here.
To comment on this story, visit the Arts Talk blog.
At the Palace, the audience cheered when a young boy seeking a slot at a charter boarding school in Washington, D.C., said “I want my kids to have better than what I have.” There were tears when a little girl who wants to be a doctor does not get one of the coveted slots in a Los Angeles charter school, seemingly destined to go to a nearby public school where a fraction of the children are deemed proficient in math and reading.
But the film’s arrival here — it will be at Albany’s Spectrum 8 Theatres — and in theaters across the country, is being used by charter supporters as a call to arms and the beginning of a major grass-roots effort. At the screening on Wednesday, students wearing school uniforms paraded the aisles holding placards bearing the cellphone number of Albany school board President Dan Egan. A speaker on stage told the crowd to text “Charter $ Now” to Egan all night and through the weekend, in an attempt to sway the district to pay the higher reimbursement rate it now owes charters.
Jasmine Olds, a 14-year-old freshman at the Albany Leadership Charter High School for Girls, handed out cards with Egan’s e-mail address and soliciting volunteers for the “Parent Army.” She said the movie will bring a welcome focus to the differences of charter schools.
“It tells me there are a lot of people who want their kids in charter schools,” she said.
A coalition made up of hundreds of pro-charter groups called Education Reform Now is capitalizing on angry audiences worked up by the film. They have started a campaign called DoneWaiting.org that is emulating the strategy of President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential victory, said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, a member of the coalition. He said the group is using a website and volunteers after the screenings to gather the names and e-mail addresses of people who want more charter schools and improved teacher accountability.
“We’re counting on this to be the jump-start to the conversation people in education reform have been awaiting for some time,” he said. “It’s expanding the chorus.”
Charter school administrators took the stage at the end of the film and blasted the Albany schools for withholding some charter payments and spending more money per student in the district schools to do the same work. They encouraged the crowd to shout “My child, my choice.”
Beverly Ivey, assistant principal at the Albany School of Humanities, a district school, sat at the back of the crowd as the noise grew louder. She said she was dismayed to see that no successful district schools were portrayed in the film and expects that it will lead to a tremendous increase in charter school applications.
“I hate to see the divide,” she said. “It is our children that need to be educated.”
Scott Waldman can be reached at 454-5080 or by e-mail at swaldman@timesunion.com.