Waiting For Superman Summary

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Summary
The documentary Waiting for Superman, directed by Davis Guggenheim (2010), examines public schools in the United States. Guggenheim (2010) explains some of the reasons, such as school funding and teacher quality, as to why public schools are failing. The film also follows the journey of parents seeking enrollment for their children into charter schools because they believe the public schools are not going to give their children the best educational outcomes. The purpose of this film can be viewed as an explanation of the issues in public education to spark opportunities for changes (Guggenheim, 2010).

Issues in Public Schools
One of the major issues discussed in Waiting for Superman is teacher quality. Guggenheim (2012) attributes “bad teachers” who are protected by the teacher unions and teacher tenure as one of the reasons public education is failing. Teacher unions and teacher tenure protects teachers from being abruptly fired. The film expresses that certain behaviors exhibited by teachers calls for termination, but teacher contracts and teacher tenure makes it hard or prevents school administrators from firing them. The process of firing teachers as …show more content…

This is an example of teachers being left out of the conversation about education. Often times when there is an attempt to make change in education, the leaders and main participants are rarely teachers. Public school teachers did not have the opportunity to share their perspective on the proposed issues in public education and did not offer their ideas to the solutions. Furthermore, without the perspective of teachers, the plot of the movie was unfair because some of blame for failing schools was placed on teachers, and they did not have the chance to respond. Additionally, the experience of teachers could offer first-hand insight on what could help improve public

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