Waiting for Superman - great movie / documentary

Haven't seen it, but watched an hour discussion on it and just hope that somehow it inspires much needed change in our education system.

My wife just watched it today(she's a teacher). I was listening while I worked.

That part about the price of keeping an inmate vs teaching a kid blew my mind -- and pissed me off too.

The United States is just like any bloated, poorly run corporation. They'd rather spend more money in the long run to put band aids on problems, instead of spending less money in a smart way, to prevent those problems in the first place.

there was a lot in that movie that pissed me off and made me shed a tear at the end seeing kids who wanted a chance not having it. One of the biggest problems with this country is the special interest groups... that and tenure. Tenure after 2 years is a fucking joke. Unions were a good idea because way way way back companies took advantage of their workers. Now the pendulum swung to the other extreme and unions take advantage of companies/governments and we pay for it.

If I was a great teacher I would be PISSED! that I was getting paid the same as some one else who kicks their feet up and doesn't give a fuck.

My wife talks about that very thing all of the time. She's known as a great teacher in her school(was Educator of the year a while back) and hates the fact that half the teachers either aren't worth a damn, or just treat it like any other job. Tenure is a big part of that.

Its because politicians know they can't fix most problems in 2-4 years time. If they make the right, tough, unpopular decisions it will be 5-10,20 years before the problem is fixed. They rather slap a band aide on it, make it look pretty on the surface, get re-elected and make it the next guy's problem. Who just repeats the process. We need someone with balls to get up and do the right thing and we need people with intelligence to back him.

looks like bullshit propaganda.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting...cy_and_motives

The problem with this country is the entitlement attitude with everything. Unions have it. Look at this with teachers. the "tenure" deal. They work for 2 years and pretty got a job for life no matter how bad they suck. They feel they are "entitled" to a job just because they show up... where performance isn't a factor? Why because you taught for 2 years without getting fired now you are entitled to a job for ever ? Or the "rubber room" in NY... what a fucking joke and waste of tax payers money.



spoken like a true troll.... as expected. Didn't watch the movie but already has an opinion... can't let a thread go by on GFY with out the troll sharing his 5 words of wisdom. go play in the street or something.

Why is he troll? http://www.thenation.com/article/154...iting-superman

besides his 18,597 other useless / smart ass posts on GFY?

because he just wanted to say something smart ass as usual. If you form an opinion on something enough to feel the need to talk about it because you read something on wiki pedia for 10 seconds vs actually watching it yourself... then you are an idiot. which is typical for that anon troll.

don't cry.

I would, if I had your life.

Waiting For Columbus...great album by Little Feat!







ADG

Concerns about accuracy and motives


A study done by Stanford University found that charter schools on average perform about the same or worse compared to public schools.
"The film dismisses with a side comment the inconvenient truth that our schools are criminally underfunded. Money's not the answer, it glibly declares. Nor does it suggest that students would have better outcomes if their communities had jobs, health care, decent housing, and a living wage. Particularly dishonest is the fact that Guggenheim never mentions the tens of millions of dollars of private money that has poured into the Harlem Children's Zone, the model and superman we are relentlessly instructed to aspire to."
— Rick Ayers, Adjunct Professor in Education at the University of San Francisco[23]
Author and academic Rick Ayers lambasted the accuracy of the film, describing it as "a slick marketing piece full of half-truths and distortions."[23] In Ayers' view, the "corporate powerhouses and the ideological opponents of all things public" have employed the film to "break the teacher's unions and to privatize education", while driving teachers' wages even lower and running "schools like little corporations."[23] The film does, however, note that since 1971, inflation-adjusted per-student spending has more than doubled, "from $4,300 to more than $9,000 per student," but that over the same period, test scores have "flatlined." Ayers also critiqued the film's promotion of a greater focus on "top-down instruction driven by test scores", positing that extensive research has demonstrated that standardized testing "dumbs down the curriculum" and "reproduces inequities", while marginalizing "English language learners and those who do not grow up speaking a middle class vernacular."[23] Lastly, Ayers contends that "schools are more segregated today than before Brown v. Board of Education in 1954", and thus criticized the film for not mentioning that in his view, "black and brown students are being suspended, expelled, searched, and criminalized."[23]
Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education at New York University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, similarly criticizes the accuracy of the film.[24] Ravitch notes that a study by Stanford University economist Margaret Raymond of 5000 charter schools found that only 17% are superior in math test performance to a matched public school, casting doubt on the film's claim that privately managed charter schools are the solution to bad public schools.[24] The film does note however that most charter schools do not outperform and that it focuses on those that do. Ravitch writes that many charter schools also perform badly, are involved in "unsavory real estate deals" and expel low-performing students before testing days to ensure high test scores.[24] The most substantial distortion in the film, according to Ravitch, is the film's claim that "70 percent of eighth-grade students cannot read at grade level", a misrepresentation of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.[24] Ravitch served as a board member with the NAEP and notes that "the NAEP doesn't measure performance in terms of grade-level achievement", as claimed in the film, but only as "advanced", "proficient", and "basic". The film assumes that any student below proficient is "below grade level", but this claim is not supported by the NAEP data.
Princeton professor Cornel West said "I have great love and respect for brother Geoffrey Canada. But I had a deep critique of the film, in which he was central. Waiting for "Superman" scapegoats teachers’ unions. Yet those countries with the best education systems in the world, like Finland, have over 90% of their teachers unionized, and their students take few, if any standardized tests. In Finland there are 2 teachers in classrooms of 14. Teachers receive the salaries of many of our businesspeople. 15% of their college graduates teach in schools rather than make their way to Wall Street to be millionaires. They reflect a fundamentally different set of priorities in America. And if we don’t adapt to those priorities, we will continue to scapegoat, demonize & thereby undercut the morale of our teachers."
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I dont have kids

Thanks for the recommendation.

at some point parents will have to accept the responsibility or raising their children and stop blaming schools, teachers, TV/Film, video games, society etc...

Thank you,Im standing up and applauding your statement They did a study if a parent was active in a childs education. It didnt matter where they went to school. The problem is unfortunately most households if there are even two parents. Everyone has to work full time jobs to provide what one spouse used to be able to do. And you have the single parents that person has to work two and three jobs to provide. Little johnnys education becomes someone elses problem.
Example my brother does ok for himself, his wife doesnt have to work. His daughter goes to private school. My sister in law does 2 hrs of homework with the kid monday thru friday and then 30 mins of reading with her before bed. Now it really wouldnt matter what school my niece went to because my sister in law is so active.

absolutely parents should be responsible for their kids. But a parent can't go to school with a child and make the teacher do a good job teaching them. The parent can only make sure their child goes to the best school and makes sure their kids goes to school, comes home and does homework etc. If the teacher / school sucks and that is all the parent can afford you can't continue to blame the parent.

The parent is to blame for a lot, but not everything. I wish people would watch the movie then comment. Throwing out general statements or copy and pasting some shit off of someone else's website just makes you a good parrot, not a person who can think for yourself.

The issues the movie brings up unfortunately upsets a lot of people who don't want to see the system changed and like anything else some people try to make it political. Instead of being a bunch of idiot sheep you people should watch it and then form your own opinions instead of making blanket uninformed decisions.

everything doesn't happen the same way it does in the one situation you are aware of. And you are wrong, even if parents are involved if the teacher doesn't teach and sucks and lets the kids run wild in the classroom then the parent is going to have to do 100% of the teaching when the kid gets home.

Single parent families unfortunately is a normal occurrence now and not all single parents can work two jobs and come home and make of for 8 hours of education because the school didn't do their job. There are schools out there where after freshman year of high school 50% don't make it back the next year and 98% wont make it to college. You can't blame 100% of the parents for being bad, the school has to be a big part of the problem. In a lot of cases both are failing. But schools could do a much better job if they fixed the system.

If we don't get education up in this country its going to keep going to shit. I don't have kids and in general wouldn't care. But i do care about what type of next generation we building and who is going to be running things when I am looking to retire. Even if parents were 100% to blame the schools could do a lot more and I just want the situation fixed going forward. The education system is broken.

I would venture to say most parents suck and most teachers are good. But there is a good bit of bad teachers and bad schools out there especially in the poorer areas. The US isn't ranked 30th in the world in education because of bad parents, its because the entire school system is broken and 50 years out dated.

Do yourself a favor, watch the movie then tell me what you think about the topic and see if it enlightens you. I bet there are a lot of facts that you are not aware of.

if you disagree with everything else and want to blame parents for everything then at least I think you would agree with this....

Why should it be impossible to fire teachers after just two years of working? Why does a teacher who does an incredible job get paid the same as one who does nothing? That right there is a big part of the problem.

lol longest post ever, and 100% copy and paste. Have you ever had an original thought in your life budsbabes ???

no comment on the critiques there?

too busy trying to pretend to save the adult industry to think critically about some movie whose ideas you blindly swallow?

you are functionally illiterate though so i can understand your resentment towards the educational system. it did let you down. i agree.

you are the sheep. you watch some movie and start yapping about it like's it's the fucking gospel.

I blame it on the tubes...

ADG

my dauhgter is okay.... I spent large amounts of time working with her

Whatever you say bud, hows the babes going these days? All washed up in adult so nothing else left to do but troll GFY 24/7/365 ?

bud bud bud.... the movie was good, you should take a break from gfy and watch it.