We posted yesterday a series of comments and links regarding the ineptly done new movie about a subject that badly needs some eptness: Waiting for Superman.  The criticism Brent Staples makes today in the NY Times Op/Ed page mirrors those in Mother Jones and elsewhere.  Davis Guggenheim, the film maker, may think he is “only asking questions,” but to these observers he has swallowed the right wing tear-down of teacher’s unions and seemed to lay the blame for failing schools pretty heavily at their feet.

Take along a handkerchief if you plan to see the new education documentary “Waiting for Superman.” Steve Barr, a tough-minded charter school developer, told me on Friday that he had already seen the film four times and still can’t get through it without sobbing.

Mr. Barr believes that the film has pulled back the curtain on a world that most Americans would otherwise not have seen — the desperation of parents who struggle, often in vain, to get their children into better schools. (The Superman in the title refers to one charter school operator’s childhood belief that the ghetto in which he lived might one day be rescued by the Man of Steel.)

Mr. Barr is unnerved by the cartoonish debate that has erupted around the movie. The many complex problems that have long afflicted public schools are being laid almost solely at the feet of the nation’s teachers’ unions.

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And from Sabrina Stevens Shupe at HuffPo an excellent take down of the business interests promoting all this school reform 

…do I buy this crisis narrative? Am I waiting for Superman? Absolutely not.

From my experience working in a “failing” school, I can say that you’d be hard-pressed to find more committed, intelligent, and caring people than the public school teachers I feel privileged to call my colleagues. Teachers work tirelessly to do right by their students. It is not for lack of skill or effort that some schools “fail.” And teachers’ unions don’t necessarily inhibit excellence. States whose teachers are mostly unionized tend to outperform those whose teachers aren’t, and some countries that outperform America have unionized teacher corps as well.

So what is this really about?

The kind of school reform that gets significant airtime right now — a combination of school closures and/or conversions, merit pay, test-based accountability, executive control of schools, and standardization — is a corporate one, and the corporate interests that created it are also funding the PR campaign to sell it. The Gates, Broad, and Walton Foundations, along with for-profit education organizations and hedge fund managers, have helped fund the creation and promotion of movies like “The Lottery” and “Waiting for ‘Superman,’ ” events like NBCs Education Nation, and “grassroots” activist groups like Stand for Children, Education Reform Now, and Done Waiting. They donate to politicians as well.

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Sign the Teachers Letter to Obama

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