"Waiting For Superman"

[wabbit]

Watch this documentary to find out how our gov't and teacher's unions have been able to keep student test scores at 1971 levels despite doubling inflation-adjusted per-student spending from $4,300 to more than $9,000 per student.

[Moab]

I have the movie ...
Here's what you see in Waiting for Superman, the new documentary that celebrates the charter school movement while blaming teachers unions for much of what ails American education: working- and middle-class parents desperate to get their charming, healthy, well-behaved children into successful public charter schools.


Here's what you don't see: the four out of five charters that are no better, on average, than traditional neighborhood public schools (and are sometimes much worse); charter school teachers, like those at the Green Dot schools in Los Angeles, who are unionized and like it that way; and noncharter neighborhood public schools, like PS 83 in East Harlem and the George Hall Elementary School in Mobile, Alabama, that are nationally recognized for successfully educating poor children. You don't see teen moms, households without an adult English speaker or headed by a drug addict, or any of the millions of children who never have a chance to enter a charter school lottery (or get help with their homework or a nice breakfast) because adults simply aren't engaged in their education. These children, of course, are often the ones who are most difficult to educate, and the ones neighborhood public schools can't turn away.
You also don't learn that in the Finnish education system, much cited in the film as the best in the world, teachers are—gasp!—unionized and granted tenure, and families benefit from a cradle-to-grave social welfare system that includes universal daycare, preschool and healthcare, all of which are proven to help children achieve better results at school.
In other words, Waiting for Superman is a moving but vastly oversimplified brief on American educational inequality. Nevertheless, it has been greeted by rapturous reviews.

[wabbit]

"You don't see teen moms, households without an adult English speaker or headed by a drug addict, or any of the millions of children who never have a chance to enter a charter school lottery (or get help with their homework or a nice breakfast) because adults simply aren't engaged in their education. These children, of course, are often the ones who are most difficult to educate, and the ones neighborhood public schools can't turn away."

These parents and kids are a product of our society and by liberal definition they cannot be blamed for their failure to get a good education. Union teachers would argue they don't have to try harder to teach them cuz "I get paid whether you learn or not."

[Moab]

So what's the non union excuse ...?

[wabbit]

There is no excuse...better teachers will provide a better education for kids in spite of or because of a union.

In my earlier post I was wrong about libs placing blame...the Feminists and Pro-Choicers would blame the single Mom living in poverty cuz she did not exercise her Constitutional right and get an abortion on the Taxpayers' dime.