Waiting For Superman

We Watched Waiting for Superman in class today. Even though the awareness for public education has increased, our test scores are still really low. The world around us has changed, but our schools have not. Even though fifty years ago, our school system was doing really well, at that time, we did not have global competition. United States ranked as the 25th country in math, but the first in confidence. The documentary discussed the flaws in our system. One that stands in my mind is that teachers have the right to earn tenure. Once they earn tenure, they are guaranteed their teaching job for life, regardless of any crime they committed or or how bad of a teacher they were. So if a teacher has to wait for their court case, they get to sit in a room for three years and get paid their full salary. All they do is sleep or read in the room. The documentary also explained how successful charter schools are because they are not subject to the teacher union contracts and they can implement any changes they see fit for the students. Also, since 2002, Clinton started the "No Child Left Behind" policy. But since then, our math scores have flat lined and have not increased. This documentary was an eye opener because I did not realize how bad the flaws are in our school system and how difficult the politics keep us from improving the system.