‘Waiting for Superman’? Or Becoming Wonder Woman?

Recently I viewed the much-awaited education documentary "Waiting for Superman." I knew before settling into my cushy theater seat exactly to what to expect: the film was not going to present a "pretty" picture of the American public education system.

Directed by Davis Guggenheim, who garnered directing honors for Al Gore’s famed “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006) on global warming, “Superman” chronicles the plight of five inner-city elementary school students destined for what passes as education in a set of underperforming schools—and ultimately unpromising futures due to lack of preparation.

Guggenheim’s film, which stealthily criticizes teachers’ unions, touts the merits of charter schools. In an emotional tug-of-war, viewers witness both parents and children naively fantasizing about pie-in-the-sky vocational possibilities and becoming emotionally involved in their lotteried attempts to snag coveted spots in charter schools.

As if it were that easy. As if that were the sole solution. As if. 

Yes, while public education has its flaws, Guggenheim’s film is also significantly flawed. It rests on several arguable premises that filmmakers expect viewers merely to accept as fact. As an aside, I suppose I can tout the merits of the school system that produced me, and in which I now teach, because erudition disallows me from blindly swallowing the unsatisfying victuals offered up as manna in the film. 

A visible point over which filmmakers gloss is the wholesale acceptance of standardized testing as the most viable method of assessment. Standardized test material tends to be inherently biased along higher socioeconomic class lines. Although I did not grow up among the “privileged,” I had no problem with tests because my parents were highly visible components in my educational experience. However, with many students, such is not the case, and while teachers can be highly inspirational, they are not alchemists. 

Standardized testing is also not a utilitarian method of assessment because it does not reflect real-world practice. Take me as a teacher, for instance. Yes, granted, I had to take one multiple choice test to gain admission to the teaching profession—and two essay tests, I might add—but never once in my decade of teaching has a supervisor measured my classroom performance by asking me to bubble in answers on a sheet.  

No, teacher assessment measures performance. Teachers are observed in action, practicing in the classroom. Likewise, might not student classroom performance—via presentations, projects, essays, and other real-world activities—be a better indicator of achievement than merely bubbling in answers?  

Teachers also should not be thrust in the role of test prep clerks. Such a position is antithetical to higher order thinking skills so valuable in creating well-educated students. I’d much rather a description of my class read, “English: The Secrets of Communicating Well and Thinking Critically,” as opposed to “English: Empty Receptacles Getting Spoon Fed Knowledge and Learning to Bubble in Answers on a Test Sheet at Culmination of the Course.” 

The No Child Left Behind education initiative, a source of the abundance of reliance on testing, has its share of critics. We would do well to leave behind the educational brainchild of George W. Bush’s administration that so dearly preferences standardized testing as sole means of assessment. 

The reliability of testing isn’t the only falsehood the film propagates. Guggenheim also falsely paints a critical portrait of teachers’ unions. Yes, teachers’ unions, he suggests, are the scourge of public education because they allow lazy, inefficient teachers to slide by without question. He points out that the purpose of tenure in the higher education system is to guarantee professors academic freedom in their classrooms, shielding them from dismissal for, say, innovation in thought that may or may not square with “popular” opinion. 

Is tenure important at the K-12 level? Teachers at that level don’t teach “ideas” as much as they do skills, some might argue, but there are still important reasons to have tenure. It prevents those in charge from dismissing an effective teacher simply on a whim or for political reasons irrespective of classroom performance. Having tenure is not a permanent stake hold in a teaching position, as Guggenheim wants to imply. It simply guarantees teachers the right to due process, to have any grievances documented and examined impartially.  

Other factors must be considered in the success of students. Yes, it is true that students can overcome overwhelming odds to become educated, productive citizens. However, the task becomes much more Herculean when teachers do not have the full backing of parents—and students—in the educational quest, and more parameters should be developed for accountability in these areas.  

Ultimately, for those who care about students and about education, it becomes not a matter of “Waiting for Superman,” the film’s pop culture reference to the comic book superhero, but rather, becoming Wonder Woman, in my case—or some other such superhero—as that is the role many of us feel compelled to fulfill as teachers every single day in the classroom, given the staggering obstacles which we often encounter.

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