Last Friday, the Hop screened "Waiting for Superman,'" (2010) a provocative documentary about the American school system. Directed by Davis Guggenheim, who previously directed "An Inconvenient Truth," (2006) the film argues that America's public education system is broken and that disadvantaged children bear the brunt of the consequences. Although I agree with most of the film's findings, I draw slightly different conclusions from the same evidence whereas the film finds fault with teachers' unions, I believe that the real problem is a lack of choice in the American school system.
The film argues that teachers matter a lot. A good teacher can teach up to 150 percent of the year's curriculum, while a bad teacher will only cover half of the curriculum. The vast majority of American schoolteachers is hardworking and entirely competent. However, a small minority is not. Erik Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, found that American students could score near the top of the pack in international math and science rankings if the United States only replaced the lowest-performing 5 to 8 percent of teachers with average teachers."
A large part of the problem is that most teachers automatically receive tenure after two years on the job. Thus, it is nearly impossible to remove the small percentage of underperforming schoolteachers. Until recently, teachers in New York who were accused of misconduct would wait idly for seven hours a day in a "rubber room" and collect full salaries while waiting for their hearings, costing New York $65 million annually. In Illinois, one in 57 doctors and one in 97 lawyers loses his license over the course of his career, but only one in 2,500 teachers loses his credentials.
The film has little time for the idea that more money alone will fix America's failing schools. While the distribution of school funding is a problem in many areas, the American education system as a whole does not suffer from a lack of money. Over the last 40 years, total education spending per pupil in the United States has more than doubled (after adjusting for inflation), yet test scores have been flat. The United States spends 40 percent more per pupil than the average country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, yet ranks far lower than the vast majority of them.
Not surprisingly, the teachers' unions are the film's main villain. The unions are being portrayed as primarily concerned with making sure no teacher loses his or her job, even at the expense of the students that these teachers are supposed to be serving. While reducing the power of teachers' union could as the film argues promote reform, I do not believe that this action alone would solve America's educational problems.
In the discussion following the Hop screening, many criticized the film for being too hard on the teachers' unions and neglecting other factors such as parenting and poverty that affect educational outcomes. While this is true, I have a different problem with the film. If rich parents are unsatisfied with their child's public school, they can move to a neighborhood with better schools or pay for private school. The vast majority of poor parents do not have these options. The film neglected to mention how the school systems in Sweden, the Netherlands and Edmonton, Alberta, have solved this problem: Parents of all socioeconomic backgrounds are allowed to send their children to any school public or private that meets the state's educational standards on the government's tab. These systems of parental choice have been both successful and popular. If we truly want to improve the educational opportunities of disadvantaged American schoolchildren, we should allow them to chose the schools they attend, just as Swedish, Dutch, Edmontonian and rich American schoolchildren already can.
America's public education system has been failing disadvantaged children for far too long. Almost 45 years ago, Kenneth B. Clark, a psychologist and crusader for school reform said, "American public education has been inefficient and unequal and has effectively blocked economic and social mobility Change and improvement have been impeded by dogmas about the inviolability of the neighborhood school, by administrative barriers, and by deep-seated psychological prejudices." It is shocking how little things have changed since then. The introduction of school choice for disadvantaged American school children is long past overdue.
