Screening Saturday: “The Inconvenient Truth about Waiting for Superman”

by David Safier

I haven't seen the film and know nothing about it, but I love the title: “The Inconvenient Truth about Waiting for Superman.” Voices for Education will be screening it Saturday, 11 am, The Screening Room, 127 E. Congress.

I hope it's good. We'll find out.

My take on the original, amazingly disingenuous film is in my post, Why the Right should hate "Waiting for Superman." Shorter version: three of the alternatives suggested as ways of "fixing" our education spend a great deal more than public schools, for all the fact that the right tells us charter schools can do more with less. Oh, and two of them say you can't improve education without addressing students' out-of-school environments, which the right denies.  The fourth example is the D.C. public school system, which, the film claims, thrived under Michelle Rhee's leadership — except that there was probably rampant cheating on standardized tests at some of D.C.'s supposedly flagship schools, while Rhee turned a blind eye to the problem.