Just saw the movie, Waiting for Superman, that I mentioned in a previous post. I went to see it last night and it was pretty insightful. I recommend everyone to see it in theaters if it's showing because you can also go to their website: http://waitingforsuperman.com/action. There you can pledge to see the movie and get a $5 code for another website donorschoose.org that you can donate to a classroom in need.
I would say there were two main points from the documentary. 1.) Data has proven that the most important factor in a child's education is not their school, not their parents, but their teacher. Because tenure is so easy to get these days for teachers (you basically have to survive 3 years or so), there are too many bad teachers that can't get fired which create failing schools. This is mainly blamed on the teacher unions, and the documentary kind of demonizes the unions, but I think they probably need some demonizing. Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of schools in D.C., came up with an alternate idea instead of tenure to pay teachers based on effectiveness up to like $150,000 a year. But the union backfired and the proposition never went to a vote. 2.) This wasn't as explicitly stated in the film, but the other major problem that is related to the previous one is the lack of public awareness of the problem in education and the obvious solution. If more people stood up and took action to demand more effective teachers and a system that would reward good teachers and got rid of bad ones, then the unions may not have as much power to stop the change even though they are the number one source of money for political campaigns in the country.
The movie encouraged me that even though I'm not enjoying my life that much right now, I'm a teacher who cares. And I'm glad my students are in my hands as opposed to someone else's.
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