Waiting for Superman (2010)

[bunniefuu]

If I have four cookies
and I ate two of them,

what portion did I eat?

You had four cookies,
and you ate two,

and then you got to cross-multiply that.

Four, two, wait.

Four, two. Four, ...

You ate f...
you ate percent of your cookie.

One of the saddest days of my life

was when my mother
told me Superman did not exist.

I was a comic book reader, and I read
comic books, and I just loved them.

'Cause even in the depths of the ghetto,
you just thought,

"He's coming, I just don't know when,
because he always shows up,

and he saves all the good people,
and they never end up..."

I was reading, I don't know maybe
I was in the fourth grade, fifth...

My mother... I was like, "You know, Ma,
you think Superman is up there?"

She said, "Superman is not real."

I was like, "He's not? What do you mean
he's not?" "No, he's not real."

And she thought I was crying because
it's like Santa Claus is not real.

And I was crying
because there was no one coming

with enough power to save us.

Every morning it's the same.

Juice, shoes, backpack,

the morning ritual.

And with it comes the uneasy feeling.

No matter who we are

or what neighborhood we live in,

each morning, wanting
to believe in our schools...

...we take a leap of faith.

In , I made a documentary
about public school teachers...

- Plus?
- Plus.

- What number's that?
- Seven.

- One plus seven equals?
- Eight.

...and I spent an entire school year

watching them dedicate
their lives to children.

It's Friday.

You need to start doing better
on these tests, OK?

- So write these...
- These teachers embodied

a hope and carried with them a promise

that the idea of public school
could work.

Ten years later, it was time to choose
a school for my own children...

...and then reality set in.

My feelings about public education
didn't matter as much

as my fear of sending them
to a failing school.

And so every morning,

betraying the ideals
I thought I lived by,

I drive past three public schools

as I take my kids to a private school.

But I'm lucky. I have a choice.

Other families pin their hopes
to a bouncing ball,

a hand pulling a card from a box,

or a computer that generates
numbers in random sequence.

Because when there's
a great public school,

there aren't enough spaces,
and so we do what's fair:

We place our children and their future

in the hands of luck.

- Are you good at school?
- Yes.

- Tell me.
- School's like, at first,

I was having difficulties at school,

but then, that's because I
wasn't coming home and studying.

And then that's when I just started
to study and I started to pass.

And I stayed back one grade,
and that was in the second grade.

Why did you stay back?

- Why?
- Because I was go...

'Cause my father had passed.

- Yeah? Do you remember that?
- Yeah.

- What happened?
- He just died.

He took dr*gs.

Thank you.

OK, see you.
Have a good day. Have fun.

- OK. See you later.
- Be careful.

OK.

And what was your choice
in taking him in like?

There wasn't a choice. I mean,
I wouldn't have had it any other way.

You know, I made a lot of mistakes,
when I was younger, with my kids.

I don't know what I would do
without him, at this point.

What, you? He needs you.
Why do you need him?

I don't know.
I think we need each other.

I really think we needs each other.
I do.

And there's nothing
I wouldn't do for him. Nothing.

One, two, three, four.
We broke them up into thirds.

- Each circle represents what fraction?
- Three.

- Three what?
- Thirds.

Three-thirds. Three over three.

Someone raise your hand and tell me,
what is divided by two?

- Twelve divided by two. Anthony.
- Six.

I want to... Well,
I have a lot of choices.

I want to be a nurse,
I want to be a doctor,

and I want to be a veterinarian.

How come?

Because I just love animals
and I would like to tell...

I would like to help
somebody in need.

How'd you get that idea?

I read books in the library.

When the Native Americans...
came to the river,

what was the difference between
when the settlers have it?

The settlers... the settlers
had put pollution in it

and the Native Americans
took care of it.

Good observation.
How do you mean "pollution"?

Because they would use...
throw all of, like,

they would throw all the
paper endings to the river.

She chose her college and she
wrote a letter to the admissions

and asking them to allow her
to attend their college.

- Already?
- Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

She's already... she knows
what she's gonna do.

So, what would you say to me
if I was your classmate and I said,

"It's too boring,
and it's too much work.

I just want to quit school."
What would you tell me?

Well, pay attention
instead of being bored.

Just look at the teacher
and find different ways

to make the learning fun.

...two, three! Next.

Do you think that
Daisy could be a veterinarian?

Oh, yeah. If she wants to.

If she believes hard enough
that she could do it,

- yeah, I believe her.
- But she has to go to high school

and then college
and then medical school.

College. Medical school.
That's a long time.

I think... I believe that's
six, seven years, eight years.

- Yeah, in college.
- Think she can do it?

Yeah.

My dad's struggling.

He sort of doesn't have a job.

My mom's the one with the job,

and my dad is trying
to get a job right now.

Bye...

Good schools.
That's what all of us want,

but sometimes I wish someone would
tell me just what these words mean.

It seems that we all have
different ideas on the subject,

yet each of us feels that
he has the very best solution.

Now, I grew up
in the South Bronx in the ' s.

The school that I was supposed
to go to was Morris High School.

If I had gone to Morris High School,
I would not be sitting here today.

It was a horrible school.
It was a failure factory.

I went into this business,
I mean, literally,

straight out of college,
the first thing I did was teach.

I went to the Harvard Graduate School
of Education, majored in Education,

and I came out and I was ready.

And I figured it was gonna take
me all of maybe two and half

to three years, if I, you know,
wasn't on my A game,

to straighten out education
in the nation. And then...

You wanted to straighten out
the education in the nation?

In the nation! It was just...
it wasn't that hard.

I was like, nah, I figured it out.
I read the papers.

I understood, you know,
what was going on.

This is ' , right?
I figured by ' , ' ,

I'd have this whole thing straightened
out. And then I ran into this system.

It seems to me we need
a great deal more information.

What do you think, Mr. Rice?

I'd like to suggest a committee.

You could not find
the sort of architects

of why this thing
was as bad as it was,

and yet nobody seemed to be willing
to really look at this and say,

"This thing is an utter failure."

I'd like for this country to have a real
education president for a change.

I'd like to be the education president.

I don't ever expect
to sign my name to any law

that is more important
than the Education Act of .

Our goal of quality education
is on a collision course

with the escalating demands
for the public dollar.

Since ,
educational spending in the U.S.

has grown from $ ,
to more than $ , per student,

and that's adjusted for inflation.

...passage of tuition tax credits...

We must address
some very real problems.

...voluntary school prayer...

It is not just a money problem,
but it is a money problem.

...and abolishing the
Department of Education.

So we've doubled
what we spend on each child.

But double the money is worth it,
if we're producing better results,

unfortunately, we're not.

Since ,
reading scores have flat-lined,

and math is no better.

As yesterday's positive report
card shows, childrens do learn.

The day of reckoning is here.

Do you like school?

- No.
- No?

'Cause sometimes math
is too hard for kids,

so kids say, "I don't like math!

I don't like math!"
And I say, "I like math."

- So you do kind of like school.
- Everybody says they don't like math.

And I... I'm the only
one who says, "I like math."

What do you want to be
when you grow up?

A recorder... like you guys.

Come on, Francisco. I don't hear you.

Francisco, that's
'cause you cut your hair.

I can use the spray.

Make sure you close your eyes.
Don't put it in your eyes.

I haven't been inside the school.
Describe it to me.

If I was to walk in the school,
what kind of feelings would I have?

- What would I see?
- Walking in, you'll see a desk

with a security guard. That's it.
You can go no further than that.

They're in the district that's the third
largest overcrowded school in the Bronx.

Public education, you know,
that's the only option we have here.

This is...

Kids look at the world
and they make certain

predictions based on the evidence

they are receiving from their peers,

from their parents
and from their teachers.

From their perspective,
the world is a heartless,

cold-blooded place, because
they realize they've been given

the short end of the stick,
and they don't know why.

Hi. It's Bianca's mom.
I'm around the corner.

I'll be there in a few minutes.

A, apple. B, bug. C...

Say it in sign language.

- D, dog. E... F...
- Hello?

Bianca, say it in sign language,
with your hands.

Come on.

Come on. Push it open.

I never did envision having children.

It's... It's something,
'cause they grow so fast,

and you just see so many
different things with them.

- Mail?
- It's my song.

Oh, you have to read these
out loud by yourself?

Yeah.

- When did she give this to you?
- Today.

I don't care what I have to do.

I don't care how many
jobs L have to obtain,

but she will go to college,
and there's just...

no second-guessing on that one.

"Take my apples, boy,
and sell them in the city.

Then you will have money,
and you will be happy..."

When you go to college, you learn,

you get your education,
and you don't get a job,

you get a career,
that there's a difference.

"...and the tree was happy."

In January of ,
after decades of empty lip service

and political bickering,
it seemed for a moment

that what had proved impossible
might suddenly be possible.

Two men, a conservative
Republican president

and a leader of the liberal
wing of the Democratic Party,

were ready to put aside their
partisan differences

for the sake of America's children.

America, the world's
only remaining superpower,

the nation that had
put a man on the moon,

was finally going to fix education.

And now it's up to you,
the local citizens of our great land,

to stand up and demand, no child,

not one single child in America,
is left behind.

It was a bold promise,

and to make good on that promise,

the architects of No Child Left Behind

decided to measure every
student in the country.

I understand taking tests aren't fun.
Too bad.

We need to know in America,

we need to know whether or not children
have got the basic education.

So now it's eight years later,

and we have four years left
to reach our goal:

percent proficiency
in math and reading.

In Alabama, only percent of eighth
graders are proficient in math,

and next door in Mississippi,
it's only percent.

And it's not just Southern states.

New Jersey, percent.

Connecticut, percent.

New York, percent.

Arizona, percent.

And in California,
just percent of eighth graders

are proficient in math.

When eighth graders across the country
were tested for reading,

most scored between
and percent of grade level.

The worst scores for reading
are in Washington, D.C.,

our nation's capital.

So you're a kid,
you're doing fine in school

till you hit the fourth grade,
fifth grade.

Between the fifth grade
and the seventh grade,

you see a huge number of minority kids

go from being B students
to D students.

Now, one of two things is happening.

Either the kids are getting
stupider every year, right?

Or something is wrong
in the education system.

But what do kids... So I'm ten,
I've been a good student.

I'm , I'm a C student.

I'm , I'm a D student.

What do you think
I think is going on?

And I'm looking now, let's say,
I'm in the seventh grade.

I'm going nowhere.

No.

How was school for you?

It was good,
but I'm one of the guys that

dropped out of school
because of money.

My dad, my dad was getting
laid off every so often,

and money was needed in the house,
food was needed on the table.

I want to go to a medical college
or a veterinarian college

to study about people and animals,

because I really
want to become a surgeon.

Daisy's path to medical school
begins with eighth grade algebra,

which she'll need to take when she
moves up to Stevenson Middle School.

By the time she leaves Stevenson,

only percent of her classmates
will be proficient in math.

I might go to Stevenson.

My sister goes there
and she says it's really fun,

just that people make
a big drama about it.

Stevenson feeds into Roosevelt,

one of the worst performing
high schools in Los Angeles.

The way that the California public
university system is set up

is there's a set of courses
called the A through G,

that you have to meet

in order to be accepted
into a four-year university.

Only three out of
a hundred students at Roosevelt

will graduate with the classes necessary
for admission to a four-year university.

And percent of Daisy's
classmates won't graduate.

We basically know which students are
gonna drop out in the next five years.

We know which schools they go to,
and with just a little bit of digging,

we can see them raising their hands
and saying, "Help."

Dr. Robert Balfanz,
at Johns Hopkins University,

has been studying
schools like Roosevelt.

He calls these schools,
where over percent

of the students don't graduate
on time, "dropout factories."

Balfanz began to see a pattern:

in cities, suburbs and rural areas,

failing elementary and middle schools,

feeding poorly educated students
into local high schools,

where they last one or two years.

In his research, he found
over , dropout factories.

Locke High School in Los Angeles
was one of the worst.

In , Steve Barr took control.

Between ninth
and tenth grade at this school,

they go from , freshmen
to to sophomores.

So, we lose, you know, kids
between ninth and tenth grade.

They come in the ninth grade.
This school, the kids read somewhere

between a first
and third-grade reading level,

and they've been pushed
through the system.

This school's years old.

I think about , people
have gone to this school in years.

Sixty thousand.
Forty thousand didn't graduate.

So over years,

this is the damage that this school
has done to this neighborhood.

To be years old and a dropout,

they're not going
to write screenplays.

Millions of kids are walking the streets
who have no vested interest in living.

They dropped out of school.

They have no diplomas.
They have no skills.

And you could name
the places where the schools...

You can talk about Detroit,
East Baltimore,

Camden, South Central,
this has all been going, this has...

since I was a child and even before.

For generations,
experts tended to blame

failing schools
on failing neighborhoods.

But reformers have begun
to believe the opposite,

that the problems
of failing neighborhoods

might be blamed on failing schools.

Bill Strickland has seen this firsthand
in his own neighborhood.

- This it here?
- Yeah, this is Oliver High School.

He went to Oliver High School,
a dropout factory in Pittsburgh.

Most of the kids had no aspirations.

They had no clue where they were going.

So this is the State Correctional
Institution in Pittsburgh.

That's where a bunch of my buddies are.

Rather than getting on with their life,

the vast majority of the guys
end up here or dead.

Sixty-eight percent
of inmates in Pennsylvania

are high school dropouts.

The state spends $ ,
a year on each prisoner...

...which makes the total cost
of the average prison term $ , .

The average private school
cost $ , a year.

So, for the same amount,

we could have sent a prison
inmate to a private school

from kindergarten through th grade,

and still had over $ ,
left for college.

It's a very expensive hotel, man.

You gotta feed them
three meals a day.

You have to provide recreation.
You have to provide security.

You have to provide medical care.

These guys don't pay taxes.
They don't work.

It's money that goes one way only.

I'm just so afraid for him.

I cries for him sometime,

'cause I'm just so afraid. I am.

I pray about Ant all the time,

'cause I know he can easily
be influenced to do things

that he shouldn't do, and it scares me.

He never knew his mom.

Think his mom had other kids,

but Anthony doesn't know those kids.

My mom left me when
I was probably about eight,

so my grandparents raised me.

Was school important to you?

No. It wasn't.

Hey, it probably wasn't because
I never had nobody to push me,

you know, to talk to me
about stuff, so it wasn't.

And your son?

He didn't... He didn't think school
was important either. No.

He didn't.

But he did his thing, I guess.

I pledge allegiance to the flag

of the United States of America,

and to the republic
for which it stands,

one nation, under God, indivisible,

with liberty and justice for all.

It's the worst possible example of
public schooling in the United States.

You know, lots of districts
have certain things wrong with them.

D.C. has everything wrong with it.

Good morning, my friends.

Good morning, Miss Thomas.

Well, are you excited about
what we're gonna do today?

- Yes.
- We wanna get a good look

at what middle school
is gonna look like.

Kimball Elementary
has been struggling.

But with a good teacher this year,

Anthony is showing promise.

Next year, Anthony's
class will leave Kimball

and move up to junior high.

This is Sousa. It's a middle school.

This is basically our
neighborhood school.

So when our children leaves Kimball,

they would automatically
be enrolled in Sousa.

And we're gonna try to also...

Most will go to John Philip Sousa,

which the Washington Post
called "an academic sinkhole."

If Anthony goes to Sousa, odds are,
he will enter high school

three to five grade levels behind.

You wake up every morning
and you know that , kids

are counting on you,
and that most of them are getting

a really crappy education
right now,

and you have the ability
to do something about that.

So you think
that most of the kids in D.C.

are getting a crappy
education right now?

Oh, I don't think they are.
I know they are.

Within the last hour,
I signed a mayoral order

to appoint Michelle Rhee
as acting chancellor

of the District of
Columbia Public Schools.

In , the education world
went into a frenzy

over the possibility that Michelle Rhee
and D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty

could actually turn around
the school district.

Just in case there was any confusion,
I am years old,

and, no, I have never run
a school district before.

Fenty picked somebody
who had never gotten a Ph.D.,

who had only been
a teacher three years,

hadn't been a principal, hadn't
been a superintendent anywhere else,

and said she was going
to tear up the district.

All of the eyes in the country
are now on D.C.

I think we have
a strategy committee

- meeting later, right?
- Yeah.

- OK. I'll see you for that.
- OK.

Bye.

Michelle Rhee
is the seventh superintendent

of the D.C. schools in just ten years.

Each of her predecessors
promised radical change,

and that this time, they could
turn their schools around.

Lieutenant General Julius Becton,

who was awarded two Purple Hearts

and a Silver Star
for heroic acts in battle,

said he never faced
a more difficult task

than reforming the schools
of Washington.

Remember, children first.

Failure is not an option.

It should be simple:

a teacher in a schoolhouse,

filling her students with knowledge,

and sending them on their way.

But we've made it complicated.

Why is it that the same student
who fails a proficiency test

in Longmeadow, Massachusetts,
can drive a mile south

and pass a similar test
in Enfield, Connecticut?

Here's why: The federal
government passes laws

and sends money to the states,

but the states fund schools, too,

and set their own,
often-conflicting standards.

And there are more than ,
autonomous school boards...

...making school governance
a tangled mess

of conflicting regulations
and mixed agendas.

You've got local school boards,

people from the State
Departments of Education,

Federal Department of Education,

district superintendents
and their huge staffs.

The things we've done
to help our schools work better

have become the things
that prevent them from working.

This whole collection of people,
which is sometimes called "The Blob,"

like out of some horror movie,
has been an impediment to reform.

No individual is necessarily
to blame, but collectively,

they are the Goliath of the system.

Central Office is
this behemoth that all your

taxpayer dollars go to,
and it's what I lead.

It's this organization that I lead,
that's the Central Office.

The District gives the Central Office
a pile of money.

Right. The city government gives the
District of Columbia Public Schools,

the Central Office,
a pile of money, to your point.

And the Central Office then
proceeds to screw everything up.

Michelle Rhee's first move

would be to tackle the problems
of her vast bureaucracy.

I mean, this district did not become
the way that it is by accident.

There's a complete and utter
lack of accountability

for the job that
we're supposed to be doing,

which is producing results for kids.

Go, stop.

Go. Stop. Go.

This is only his second year there.

You know, first grade for him
has been very horrible.

Francisco hasn't had...

He hasn't been that
fortunate with teachers.

Maybe that attitude of him not liking
school comes from that, I think.

His teacher is telling me
that he has difficulty in reading.

The teacher said he wasn't being
focused and this and that.

That he's at risk of staying behind,
repeating first grade,

which I don't understand,
because I do work with him at home.

- Is this a bat?
- Bat or rat?

- Mommy?
- Rat.

- Mommy, this is subtracting?
- R.

- I don't have an "R."
- I don't know. You tell me.

- Sound it out.
- "...kinds of loads."

- Very good.
- "...this yellow car makes it go.

Go, go, go. Don't be slow.

- Beep, beep."
- Very good.

So when you stand there,
what's the feeling of the place?

Why bother? You know, it's like, why?

Why are my kids here? Why?
Why do I have to go through this?

There's a lot of why, whys,

and to the point where I get upset...

They have a van.

...and wishing I could
do better for my kids.

- Right there?
- Yeah. Did you tell Mr. Saxon

that Mommy said that
she needed your folder?

- Yeah, and I got it.
- OK. So he said that was OK?

- Yeah.
- OK.

- We're stuck.
- It doesn't seem fair.

It's not fair,
but this is where we live.

Yes, hi. My name is Mrs. Regalado,

and I would like to
leave a message for Mr. Saxon.

Thank you.

Yeah, I would just like to have a
teacher-parent conference with him.

After lots of studies, we come down
to just what most parents believe,

and that is a good teacher
is what's working

and a bad teacher
is what's not working.

Eric Hanushek has tracked the effect

of individual teachers
on groups of kids.

The difference between a really good
teacher and a really bad teacher

is one year of learning
per academic year.

Students with high-performing teachers
progressed three times as fast

as those with low-performing teachers,

and yet they cost
the same to the school.

A bad teacher covers only percent

of the required curriculum
in a school year.

A good teacher can cover percent.

They gave a kid a video camera,

and he put it in his book bag.

- What are we doing in here today?
- Nothing!

He videotaped kids sh**ting crap
in the back of the room.

He videotaped teachers
reading newspapers.

We had a teacher put
a kid's head in a soiled toilet.

- Where's our teacher at?
- They mic me up live,

turn on the television,

and I see all of this going on.
So, the guy asked me,

"What are you gonna do?"

I said,
"I'm gonna fire these people!"

My staff is in the back of
the room going like this, like,

"Man, you can't fire nobody.
You can't...

What, you can't say that."
I thought I was in charge.

Howard Fuller fired the worst teachers
in the video,

but was forced to rehire them
with a year's back pay

because of a provision in the
teachers' contract called "tenure,"

which guaranteed their jobs for life.

The idea of tenure
started in universities.

It was meant to protect professors
from getting fired

for arbitrary or political reasons.

In universities, professors
are only granted tenure

after many years of teaching

and a grueling vetting process,
and many don't receive it.

But for public school teachers,
tenure has become a*t*matic.

Three, two, one. OK, children,
I've just been granted tenure.

So I'm gonna sit back
and let Ralph teach for a while.

Class, in what year was one plus one?

The answer is The Amazing Ralph!

You can get tenure basically
if you continue to breathe

for two years, you'll get it,
and whether or not you can help children

is totally irrelevant
to whether or not...

And once you get tenure,
we cannot get rid of you.

Almost no matter what you do,
you are there for life,

even if it's proven
you're a lousy teacher.

Are you gonna teach us anything,
or are we just gonna sit here?

Just do whatever you want.

- I wanna learn from my teacher.
- Besides that!

Look, if we were talking about people

who made Tastykakes, right, I'd say,

"Look, I'm worried
that they might get rid

of the poor people who put
the squiggles on Tastykakes."

I'm sure it's a machine.
"They ought to be protected

and we should make sure they
don't lose their job, right?"

American educators,
organizing into unions,

on strike against conditions
they consider no longer tolerable.

They used to be able to get away
with paying women teachers

very little money,
because their husbands worked,

and that's how teachers' unions started.

Teachers had
little protection or recourse

from a system that routinely
took advantage of them.

Teachers organized
because they're in that situation

where they're infantilized and told
what to do. And yet, in their classroom,

they know they have
these huge responsibilities,

and so they said, "Look, how
am I going to get the power?"

If you care about the students
you teach,

if you wanna make a difference
in their lives,

if you wanna advocate
for what they believe in,

you have to go
where the decision-makers are.

Taken together,

the two biggest teachers' unions,
the NEA and AFT,

are the largest campaign
contributors in the country.

Over the last years,
they've given over million dollars

to federal candidates
and their parties,

more than the Teamsters, the NRA

or any other individual organization,

and more than percent of
this money goes to Democrats.

At the national level,

the Democratic Party
was a wholly owned subsidiary

of the teachers' unions
on education policy.

Now, at the state level,
where a lot of policy is made,

the Republican Party was also,
and continues to be,

very tied in with the teachers' unions.

We have often
been called a special interest,

and I will never apologize for that

because our special interests
are the students we teach.

They're worth fighting for

with every w*apon in our arsenal.

I kept running into this issue of,

Hey, you know what?
I don't think we can do anything

unless we deal with the unions.

Nope, nope. That's off the table.

You can't even bring it up? No.
Why can't you even talk...?

No. Because it's off the table.

The mayors didn't wanna talk about it,
the folks at the state houses,

the governor, no one
wanted to bring this up.

The teachers' unions,
in general, have taken a position

that I don't think is
actually in their own interest,

but the position that they've taken is

that we shouldn't make any
distinctions among teachers.

A teacher is a teacher is a teacher.

So, this is

an evaluation process
for all teachers.

It's called the Professional
Performance Evaluation Process,

or colloquially the P-PEP.

And there are strict rules
to replace a failing teacher.

It has steps.

There is an initial conference
at the beginning of the year.

Weekly assistance must be provided.

Then the observation has to occur, it
has to be a certain number of minutes.

Then there's a post conference which
needs to happen after the observation.

Over those days, the principal must
do three more observations...

If it isn't completed by January,

you have to wait
until the following year.

There's lots of forms
and dates and deadlines

that have to be followed,
and if a single date is missed,

for whatever reason, the entire process
can be subject to grievance.

I don't know,
it just feels like a strange...

...game to me.

Jason Kamras
is not just a cold-hearted bureaucrat.

In , he was named
teacher of the year.

People like Kamras will tell you,

there's nothing more difficult
than the life of a teacher.

I saw this when I followed the teachers
in my first documentary.

It was an incredible thing,

their total devotion
to the lives of children.

And I could see just
how tough their jobs were:

battling learning problems,
issues at home,

and rules from the system.

One day it can be really good,
and one day it can be, like,

not so good, and then the next
day it can be, like, horrible.

But the other thing reformers
and experts will tell you,

often under their breath,
is that their biggest obstacle

to real reform is a contract
with the teachers' union

which ties their hands.

So if you wanna
reward a really good teacher,

who's kicking ass, knocking it
out of the park, can you do that?

We, under the current contract,
cannot pay teachers

more based upon their performance.

- Why not?
- It's not in the contract.

The muscle and the zeal
that built our union is still with us.

You are heroes!

It's very, very important
to hold two contradictory ideas

in your head at the same time.

Teachers are great,
a national treasure.

Teachers' unions are,
generally speaking,

a menace and an
impediment to reform.

I'm a superintendent.

I'm assigning kids over to a school.

The day I send them over there, I know
they ain't gonna learn nothing,

'cause ain't nobody learned
anything over there in years.

You go into a school building, right?

And you go into this classroom where
this great learning is taking place.

Then you walk right next door to death.

Teachers used to pass me notes,
"Make sure you go to room ."

And the principal,
who would be taking me around,

before I go in, "OK,
Howard, I wanna tell you.

This is one of my,
what they call 'two- -T'."

What that is,
is a provision in the contract

that provided what we call
the "dance of the lemons."

- And...
- The what?

"The dance of the lemons."

So when you have a system
that's completely dysfunctional,

you see good people
do strange things.

In Milwaukee, they call it
the "dance of the lemons."

Here's how it works.

Principals have their lemons.

These are teachers
who are chronically bad.

They know it,
the other teachers know it,

the school knows it,

but the union contract
says you can't fire them.

So at the end of the year,

all the principals get together
and they do the lemon dance.

Fred gives Jack his lemons,

Jack gives Sally his lemons,

and Sally gives Greg her lemons.

The lemon dance.

Each principal hopes
the teachers he's stuck with

at the end of the dance
are somehow better

than the ones he's getting rid of

and that this year
he'll finally be able

to take his lemons
and make lemonade.

Each state deals with this
in a different way.

In some states, it's "pass the trash,"

others, it's the "turkey trot."

In New York,
they have something else.

Tenured teachers awaiting disciplinary
hearings on offenses

ranging from excessive lateness
to sexual abuse,

along with those
accused of incompetence,

are sent to the reassignment center

or what the rest of the world
calls the "Rubber Room."

These teachers
collect their full salaries

and accumulate benefits
for spending seven hours a day

reading or playing cards.

They spend an average of three
years in the Rubber Room.

Their hearings last eight times longer
than the average criminal case.

The cost to the state of New York:

million dollars a year.

And none of this deals
with the larger pool of teachers

who just aren't good at their job.

If, in fact, we could just eliminate

the bottom six to ten percent
of our teachers

and replace them
with an average teacher,

we could bring the average U.S. student
up to the level of Finland,

which is at the top
of the world today.

The state of Illinois
has school districts,

only of them have ever attempted
to fire a tenured teacher,

and of those ,
only were successful

in actually firing a teacher.

Compare that to other professions.

For doctors, one in
lose their medical licenses.

One in attorneys
lose their law licenses.

But for teachers, only one in ,

have ever lost their
teaching credentials.

I actually know how hard it is

to be a good teacher.

Then I taught English
and I taught social studies,

and I taught it to high school kids
who were two and three years behind.

And after all of my preparation,

I was a terrible teacher
for the first two years.

I mean, I was better than the other
teachers, but we were all terrible.

We could not move that group of kids.

It took me three years
to become a decent teacher

before I really learned my craft,

and in about five years,
I was a master teacher.

When Geoffrey Canada
pushed for change,

he was met at every step
by a system

with an infinite power to resist
and defeat his reforms.

So he joined a small group
of teachers and parents

who were looking
for solutions elsewhere.

In the early ' s,
a few communities began granting

provisional charters to create schools
that weren't bound

by the rules of the district
or union contracts.

Do you know anybody
in the fourth grade?

It's a free public school for...

It's a college prep charter school,

completely free,
over off the Marcy stop.

Charter schools were
a controversial experiment:

public schools with public money,

but independently run.

When there's limited space,

by law the school
must hold a lottery.

Geoffrey Canada petitioned
to start a charter school

in the worst-performing district
in New York State.

We chose blocks in Central Harlem.

It had the worst educational
outcomes for children,

and we came here
because it had the worst.

These blocks have the highest rate
of foster care,

and twice the unemployment rate
of the rest of New York City.

Many experts believed that even
the most motivated educators

could not overcome the problems that
these children brought from home.

But despite the failures
of reformers before him,

Geoffrey Canada made a promise
to the families of Harlem.

Your child comes to this school,

we will guarantee that we will
get your child into college.

We will be with you, with your child,

from the moment they enter our school

to the moment they graduate
from college.

I grew up in the public school system.

I had a economics teacher,

and that teacher refused to teach.

When you hear, "Well,
I get paid whether or not

you learn or not," it sticks with you.

And that's something that
no parent wants their child

to ever be a witness to or
to hear when they're going to school.

If I'm trusting you with my child
and teaching my child,

I expect you to do the same job
that you would want

for your... for your own children.

And I just knew that I wanted
her in parochial school.

Bianca's school is directly across
the street from their home.

Every month, Nakia pays $ tuition.

It's a struggle.

It's a struggle,
but it's a choice that I made.

It's my responsibility to my child.

Her first year in school,

I had lost my job
due to some layoffs,

and I did all that I could

and made sure that
she still got her education.

One notebook.

Do you ever think if you sent Bianca

to a public school, there would
be less pressure with money?

I have given that some thought,

but I revert right back
to the same thing.

I'll just have to find a way.

There's nothing short
of a firestorm surrounding

the future of the D.C.
Public School system.

At the center of the controversy, new
schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee.

D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee
will not name names,

but more than school principals
are being terminated this week.

No shortage of outrage tonight
among parents and teachers

caught up in the district's plan to
close nearly two dozen public schools.

Fifty-seven teachers
and support staff

are having to reapply for their jobs.

Within a few months,

the initial burst of enthusiasm
for Michelle Rhee had faded.

She had cut over a hundred jobs
in the D.C. Central Office,

closed schools
and fired a quarter of all principals,

including the principal
of her own children's school.

Don't close schools!
Don't close schools!

If you wanna quickly become the most
unpopular person in a city,

you just tell someone you're gonna
close down a school, much less .

We work hard every day to make
sure those strengths are strong.

I'm not a career superintendent.

This will be my one
and only superintendency.

So I don't have to worry
about pissing the unions off

and, you know, making this person
upset or that person upset.

The bottom line is I don't believe
that you are gonna be the leader who

is going to take this school to... in
the direction that we need it to go in,

and have the highest
expectations for the kids.

This scorched earth debate may actually
make some people's career.

No, I'm terminating
your principalship now.

May make somebody popular
in terms of,

"I'm the change agent,"
but it's not gonna change schools.

We will not be moved!
We will not be moved!

There is this unbelievable willingness

to turn a blind eye
to the injustices that

are happening to kids
every single day in our schools

in the name of harmony amongst adults.

Francisco? Francisco?

Good morning, sleepyhead.

Maria still hasn't heard
from Francisco's teacher.

The old one is Spider-Man.

Francisco, tell Mr. Saxon
to send Mommy your folder

because Mommy wants to know
how you're doing in school.

He said we don't need it.

OK, but remember Mommy needs to
know if you're paying attention,

if he's giving you stickers. Remember?

As I grew up going to college
and was exposed to more,

only then did I realize how
much I was cheated as

a child in my education.

This was the day
I came back from college.

My dad, because of the diabetes,
has stopped...

He wasn't able to move too much.

That day, he actually
danced a song with me.

For my father,
education was everything.

It was like if he would've
had gotten a chance,

he would have become something in his
life, rather than just a factory worker.

This is a fork, and it's not a "hork."

Right, 'cause "hork" isn't even a word.
That's a made-up word, but...

- "Horse" is a word.
- "Horse" is a word,

and there you would use "H."
And what about this one?

Maria takes Francisco
to a reading class at a nearby college.

Teachers are really overwhelmed,

'cause it's really hard
to give each one that,

you know, individualized attention.

So it's more work for them
to have these kinds of meetings.

If they can avoid them, unfortunately,

you have some teachers
that will avoid them if they can.

Well, he's already been in two reading
programs and teachers are telling me

that he knows how to read,
he's comprehending,

and the teachers keep telling me

that there's something
with his comprehension.

- Have you taken it beyond the school?
- No.

You should.

If you want a better school
for your kid, it's all about options.

But the system is confusing.

Let's say you live in a district
with a hundred public schools.

Most are like Francisco's,
not terrible, but not great.

A fifth will be failing,

and more will be hovering
between mediocre and failing.

There's usually one mainstream school
that's defying the odds.

With a great principal
and outstanding teachers,

it can produce amazing results,

but you can't go there unless
you live in that neighborhood.

So, for years, unless you
could afford a private school,

you were stuck with your
neighborhood school.

In the s,
magnet schools were formed.

These were district-run schools
to give families another choice.

Some were for job training,
some were for the arts

and some were for academics.

But there aren't that many magnets,
and they're very difficult to get into.

In the ' s,
public charter schools emerged.

They're independent from the district,
but open to anyone who lived there.

But only one in five charters
is producing amazing results,

and so the numbers of families
applying there are usually very high.

So a parent like Maria has to work hard

to find a great school for her kid.

She takes a -minute subway ride
across the Harlem River

to look at a charter school.

One of the things that we've really
put a lot of emphasis on

this past year
is reading comprehension.

So not just can they read the
words on the page with fluency?

It's do they really
understand what they're reading?

Freddy was...

So is the difference between
the school down here

and Harlem Success that great?

Yes. It's two different worlds.

"One Sunday morning,
the wrong sun came up, and pop!

Out of the egg came a tiny..."

- Caterpillar.
- Do you know...

Every student who's behind
in reading is assigned

a tutor and has one
until they're caught up.

How many books do you think you're
gonna read by the end of the school,

by the time school finished?

Probably like the same amount
that I read last year.

- Which was what?
- One hundred and five.

Wow! Really?

I don't care if we have to wake up
at : in the morning

in order to get there by : ,
then that's what we will do.

And do you start this at third grade
or do you start it from kindergarten?

- Kindergarten.
- Kindergarten? Wow.

- That's what we do here.
- So by the time they get to third,

this is easy for them. Yeah.

So if Francisco doesn't get in,
is there another chance?

No. No, because he'll
be going into second grade,

and most schools, they only take
kindergarten, first and second,

so this is Francisco's last chance.

- Abuela birthday is in June.
- June.

Harlem Success
will take second graders...

...with families applying.

Why don't we skip...

Now, can anyone tell us
what a picnic is?

A picnic is where you go out
in the country

and eat food off the dirt.

Up until the s, American public
schools were the best in the world.

Bob, you've been keeping
your grades up. That's good.

The image of public schools in our films
and TV reflects an ideal,

that even if you're unlucky enough
to be born in the wrong neighborhood,

education could be a ticket out.

Mr. Vincent Barbarino,
I don't see any homework.

All right, so I didn't do my homework.

So 'scuse me for living!

Public school was not an ordeal
we had to survive,

but rather the single most important
formative experience in our lives.

Since , U.S. public schools

have produced more than
a hundred Nobel laureates,

ten presidents and countless
numbers of great Americans.

Americans were really leading the world
in educating its young people

because we had sort of
this free education system,

and it was halfway decent,
, years ago.

We didn't really have global
competition. I mean, we really didn't.

And everybody thought
when Nixon opened China, right?

One of the... the time, you say,
"Look, you know what's gonna happen

if we could just sell
every Chinese person

a toothbrush? We'll make billions!
Why, there's just so many of them."

And we never realized that they would
be selling us the toothbrushes.

Since the s,
U.S. schools have failed to keep pace

with the rest of the world.

Among developed countries,
we rank th in math

and st in science.

The top five percent of our students,
our very best,

rank rd out of
developed countries.

In almost every category,
we've fallen behind, except one.

The same study looked at math skills
and found in these eight countries,

the USA ranked last. But when
researchers asked the students

how they felt they had done,
"Did I get good marks in mathematics,"

kids from the USA
ranked number one in confidence.

We might be overconfident,

but if you look at the
public schools in our suburbs,

this belief that we're number one
doesn't seem so wrong.

Inner city schools may be failing,

but your kid's gonna be fine if his
school has a new athletic facility,

an art center and a closed circuit
system for the principal

to broadcast his morning messages.

Girls, when you're
doing a water event,

I understand that
you can wear a tankini,

but not a bykini, bikini.

People move into an area, and they
know they're paying a lot of money

for their mortgage, for their house,
so they assume that the school

must be just as nice as their house.

Many of the kids are actually
doing quite poorly

when it comes to basic subjects
like English and mathematics.

Redwood City is minutes south
of San Francisco,

in the heart of Silicon Valley.

No inner city problems here.

The average home price
is almost a million dollars.

When you bought your house here, did
you think the schools would be good?

Well, we did, yes, we did. And as I say,
when we first moved in, they were.

What side of the periodic table
are metals found on?

Now you're asking me?

I can't answer that, love,
it's been too long.

I'd say the top side, but I don't know.

There is no top side.
"On the periodic table,

metals are found generally
on the left side. True."

Emily Jones is in the eighth grade
at Roy Cloud Middle School.

Now be a good girl.

What's that mean?
The bosses don't know their employees?

- Emily?
- 'Cause back in the old days

when people had small businesses,

there were only
like five or six people working,

but in the factories, they had
hundreds and hundreds of people

working, and they barely knew,
like, their names.

Very good.

What's your favorite subject?

I'm not very good at math, but I think
I'd say it's my favorite subject.

Math and science.

I don't know what college
I want to go to,

but I know I wanna be a teacher.

Woodside High,
where Emily is slated to go next year,

looks like a private boarding school,

and Newsweek ranked it in the top six
percent of American high schools,

but Emily and her family
wanna go somewhere else.

Summit Prep is located
in an industrial neighborhood.

It doesn't have the fancy
facilities of Woodside.

It doesn't even have a gymnasium.

But over families
are entering the lottery here

and hoping for a spot because of
something else it doesn't have.

They all take the same courses
through their four years,

which means we don't have tracking,
so...

...yeah, so we don't track the students.

So the school over there tracks
and you don't. Why?

Because we think every kid should be
able to get to the highest level of

curriculum, so we want to hold them all
to the same high standard.

Emily's probably not gonna drop out,

and it's very unlikely
she'll go to prison,

but her test scores are low, which means
the stakes for her next year are high.

Many families
and their children are unaware

that their academic future will
be decided by a school official

who will place them on a track.

Tracking is often
determined by test results,

but research shows that
students are also tracked

by arbitrary or subjective
factors like neatness,

politenest
and obedience to authority.

Lower tracks have lower expectations,
and often worse teachers.

So students placed on lower tracks
often find they are running fast,

but falling behind.

As the years progress,
it becomes increasingly difficult

for those kids to ever catch up.

The high-performing kids,
they often have

special programs where they
come through pretty well.

A lot of the kids who get hurt
are the ones in the middle.

Eighty-seven years before...

Middle class schools
suffer from the same

dysfunction as urban schools,

but because they attract
more high-performing students,

their test scores are inflated.

It averages out to a point
where it masks the bottom

percent of students
in those schools.

The California State University system

is designed to accept the top one-third
of high school graduates,

but most are not prepared.

They have to remediate to percent
of all incoming freshmen

before they can take
college level classes.

Look at Woodside High School.
Out of ninth graders,

will graduate and only will be
prepared for a four-year college.

But at Summit Prep,
out of a hundred students,

will graduate,

and all of them will be ready
for a four-year college.

To LA. We're going to LA.
You remember we're going...

Emily and her family have signed up
for the Summit lottery.

The computer just randomizes
the numbers in an order.

Say -A is like the th
student to get into Summit,

then they have a list
of all the numbers who aren't

gonna get in but who are
on the waiting list.

- Was it ... or spots?
- Five hundred.

- For a hundred spots?
- Five in one chance.

- Well, we'll see.
- Yeah.

It's not like
Woodside High School is so bad.

Many families would be happy
to send their kids there.

In fact, Woodside is doing the job it
was designed for, years ago.

The system of tracking
fit the demands of the time.

Only percent
of high school graduates

were even expected to go to college.

They would become doctors,
lawyers and CEOs.

The next percent were meant
to go straight into skilled jobs,

like accountants,
managers and bureaucrats.

And the bottom percent
would become workers,

like farmers and factory workers.

There were jobs for everyone
in the booming post-w*r economy,

and schools like Woodside did their part
to supply a useful workforce.

The problem is our schools
haven't changed,

but the world around them has.

Nowadays, you don't go to college,
you're kind of screwed in America,

you know,
and America's kind of screwed.

At the end of , the unemployment
rate was almost ten percent,

but the high-tech industry
could not find enough

qualified people to fill their jobs.

Instead, they had to go halfway
around the world to recruit

the engineers and programmers
they needed.

The only really proven thing
to make an economy work well

is to have a well-educated workforce.

You know, people get panicked about
the economic success of this country.

Well, there's one thing
that will determine that.

Bill Gates was so worried about
the state of our schools,

he testified before Congress.

We cannot sustain
an economy based on innovation

unless we have citizens
well-educated in math,

science and engineering.
If we fail at this,

we won't be able to compete
in the global economy.

We're not just lacking graduates
in math and science.

By the year ,
million American jobs

will be high skill, high pay,

but only million Americans
will be qualified to fill them.

How strong the country
is years from now

and how equitable the country
is years from now

will be largely driven by this issue.

My parents actually tell me
I have to read minutes

and then I could go outside and play.

Go get it, go get it.

Has your mom and dad
told you about the lottery?

No.

The lottery? Isn't that when
people play and they win money?

Daisy and her parents have
found one other option.

Eighth graders at KIPP LA Prep
get triple the classroom time

in math and science,

and by the time they
finish eighth grade,

they will have doubled their
math and reading scores.

You can see the trees.
You can see a building, a pole.

Judith and Jose have decided
to enter Daisy into the KIPP lottery.

KIPP is a better school
that they won't let you fail.

- They won't let you fail?
- No.

Good morning.

Mom! Everybody's
going to school now!

- I know.
- I'm not graduating.

No, you're graduating.
You just won't be at the ceremony.

When am I gonna graduate?

Nakia's hours
have been cut back at work,

and she has had trouble making her
monthly payments to Bianca's school.

Today is her graduation,

and she's not allowed to go

because I do owe some tuition,

and they will not allow her
to go to the ceremonies.

And...

It's enough that I
have to explain it to her,

but...

And I spoke to the principal about this

and I asked him, why penalize
her for my responsibility?

I can understand them not
giving her, her certificate

or not giving her, her report card,

but to not let her be
a part of the ceremony

is just... it's harsh.

The Catholic schools,
the scholarships

are very limited
or they're already used up.

They just said,
then try again for next year.

I said, "Mommy wanted you
to stay in your school,"

and she finished my sentence,
she said,

"I know, but you
didn't have enough money."

I said, "That's right."
I said, "But that was Mommy's choice

to put you in that school,
and it's gonna be Mommy's job

to get you another school
that's better."

Nakia is entering Bianca into
the lottery at Harlem Success.

I'm very nervous.

We're gonna go over

and we're gonna keep our fingers
crossed and hope that we get called.

When Geoffrey Canada opened
the doors to his new charter,

he saw kids that were two
and three grade levels behind,

and they brought
with them other problems

that middle class students
didn't have:

poverty, crime, troubled homes.

In his neighborhood,

more kids knew people
who had been to prison

than had gone to college.

For decades, tests have
shown an achievement gap

between rich and poor children,
and that over time,

despite everything we've tried,

nothing seems to make it any better.

Even progressive educators

began to believe that
the gap could never be closed.

And for those of us who drive
by these schools,

maybe we make
the same dark assumption,

that those kids, the ones
in the poorest neighborhoods,

just can't learn.

One-eight-seven.

In , many felt that the sound
barrier could never be broken.

Even men of science believed
that our fastest planes

would break apart when they
approached the speed of sound.

The glass would shatter
and the metal would shred.

It was a belief that kept
many a pilot on the ground

and science from moving forward,
until Chuck Yeager.

About half of the engineers
gave us no chance at all

of ever successfully flying
beyond the speed of sound.

They said it's a so-called barrier,
and the airplane

would, you know,
go out of control or disintegrate.

I didn't look at it that way.

Almost everybody who
comes in to do school,

they come in and try
to save kids after they're lost.

Having seen firsthand the failures
of reformers before him,

Geoffrey Canada knew he had
to rethink the way a school worked

in a troubled neighborhood.

At the same time in Houston,
David Levin and Mike Feinberg

were two frustrated teachers
looking for another way.

Across the hall from Levin was
a veteran teacher named Harriet Ball.

Break it down and show me how you
choose for these other measures

How do you choose for these
other measures? Like the liter.

She noticed that her kids
had trouble learning math terms,

but could memorize a rap song.

It doesn't matter how heavy it is

So she turned her multiplication tables
into a song.

I'm a mathbook that I left on the...

She called them "disposable crutches,"
and she said,

"Once I have the basics in that way,
in an enjoyable way,"

and the kids would sort of sing
these songs out in the playground,

"then I can move to the next step."

For Levin and Feinberg,
it was nothing short of a revelation.

Can you count by seven?

- Yes!
- Let's do it.

Seven, , ...

They studied Ball's methods,

and drew from other teaching practices,

and opened two new schools
called KIPP Academy,

one in Houston
and the other in the Bronx.

Against the advice of skeptics, Geoffrey
Canada laid out an ambitious vision

for a school that would go far
beyond what others had tried.

We said, "What if we never
let our kids get behind?"

He created an educational pipeline,
which started at birth...

Can I give you a flyer
on The Baby College?

...following each child through
every stage of their development,

whatever it took.

Eight, , , , .

Both KIPP and Canada
used the same fundamentals.

They increased classroom hours,

held school on Saturdays
and even in the summertime...

- Does everybody agree with that?
- Yes.

...put relentless
focus on achievement

with a singular emphasis
on a pathway to college...

Could you hand me the
dissecting needle, please?

Right from the start,
there is a "No excuse."

"We expect you all
to perform at high levels."

And everybody
cares about this. Everybody.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come here, come here,
come here, come here, come here.

What's up with this?
It's a whole new look.

I'm going to gym.

That scientists have discovered
you can avoid...

...and the results have been staggering.

The top charter schools are sending
over percent of their kids

to four-year colleges, because
when you get the culture right,

and the teachers
are helping each other out,

and that long school day means
that that is the primary thing

that student is engaged in, it works.

KIPP Academy has been named

the highest-performing middle
school in the entire Bronx.

Congratulations, Kippsters.

- Austin!
- Texas!

But the experts refused to accept

that this was anything more
than a few charismatic leaders,

an idea that could never be
repeated or brought to scale.

Sixteen years later,
there are KIPP schools

across the country, each in low-income,

under-performing neighborhoods,
including KIPP LA Prep,

where Daisy is applying.

You can't beat their data.

We have now data
from the first thousand kids

who have gone through
four years of KIPP.

Those kids have gone from the nd
to the th percentile in reading,

and from the th
to the nd percentile in math.

We have never had those kinds
of gains for low-income kids.

I want somebody to come up
and draw three quarters for me.

In Geoffrey Canada's program,
there are , students.

In a neighborhood where less

than one out of ten residents
have a college degree,

nine out of ten are proficient in math

and are on track to go
to a four-year college.

Twenty-five years ago, there was no
proof that something else worked.

Well, now we know what works.

We know that it's just a lie that...
that disadvantaged kids can't learn.

We know that if you apply the
right accountability standards,

you can get fabulous results.

So why would we do something else?

Brilliant. What, you
could be one of my teachers.

When you finish, and you get your
college degree, come work for me.

You can help us teach math, all right?

The students at KIPP
and Geoffrey Canada's schools

don't just do better
than other poor kids.

They do better than everyone,
closing the achievement gap

and shattering the myth
that those kids can't learn.

Anthony's class visits the SEED School,

the first urban public boarding
school in the country.

I'm sure a mother, father,
sister, brother, aunt, uncle,

grandparent, neighbor, someone
has taken an interest in you

and someone loves you,

and they recognize the
importance of education.

To come to SEED,
geography and luck, that's it.

You have to live in
the district, and we have

to pull out a bingo ball,
call your number.

You can actually have posters
on your side of the room.

- You can decorate however you want.
- This is like a college.

Yes, this is like a college.
This is exactly...

And so because you're
in a boarding school, by the time

you get ready to go to college, you will
already know what it's gonna be like.

If I get into SEED,
I'm gonna have seven classes.

Gotta wake up early, usually,

and then you gotta wear ties and stuff.

No TV...

...no games, no nothing.

So you hoping you get in,
or you hoping you don't get in?

It's bittersweet to me if I get in.

They give me a better chance in life,
but if I don't,

I just be with my friends.

One, two...

Where are you? 'Sup with you?

In a way I want him to get in,
buts another part of me

really don't want him to get in.

Why?

Because he'll be gone all that time,
but I want him to go.

A part of me wants him to go.

What are the odds of getting in?

I don't know.

I wanna go to college
and get an education.

Why?

Because I... if I have kids,

I don't want kids to be
in this environment.

- What?
- Like around here.

I mean, I want my kids
to have better than what I had.

You're already
thinking about your kids?

No, I'm just saying.

I wanna go to school.

After a short time,
Michelle Rhee had made clear progress.

Test scores were up across the city,

and her broad powers allowed
her to shift resources away

from the Central Office
and into her schools.

For the first time
in Washington, D.C. public schools,

we've ensured that every single
school has an art teacher,

a music teacher, a PE teacher,
a librarian and a nurse.

But when she tried
more fundamental changes,

the kind she saw
in successful charter schools,

the more she ran up against the system.

She couldn't extend the school day,

effectively evaluate her teachers

or alter the terms of tenure.

So in the summer of ,

Rhee proposed a radical change
in the way the D.C. school district

and the union had done business
for almost a century.

How soon do you think you'll
have a contract with the teachers?

- We're going to...
- Within weeks? A couple of weeks?

We're going to present our final offer

in the next couple of weeks.

We are gonna change the face
of public education in this country.

Instead of demanding the end of tenure,

Rhee made a proposal that
would give teachers a choice.

Keep tenure and get a modest raise,

or give up tenure and earn potentially
twice as much in merit pay.

Everyone says teachers
don't get paid enough.

We're gonna pay teachers
six-figure salaries.

Everybody has a choice in the matter.

It seemed that Rhee had come up
with a magic formula

to solve the most intractable
problem in all of education.

If she succeeded, it could open
the way for even broader reforms.

Educators were watching closely,
and, not surprisingly,

so was the National Teachers' Union.

What we're against is
proposals that divide people,

and that undermine education.

The mentality is that
they have a right to that job.

I believe that that mindset has
to be completely flipped on its head,

and unless you can show that you're
bringing positive results for kids,

then you cannot have the privilege
of teaching in our schools

and teaching our children.

We ultimately wanna have
the most highly effective

and highly compensated educator
force in the country.

We wanna make sure that we recognize
and reward our effective teachers,

and I think that this proposal
will go a long way to doing that.

After months of highly charged debate,

the local union leadership
found Rhee's proposal so threatening,

they would not even allow a vote.

Now I see in a lot more coherent ways

why things are the way they are.

It all becomes about the adults.

We've tried money...

...passing laws...

...and the latest reforms.

I want you to get a real good idea
when you start to create your figures.

But the one thing those
who work in the trenches know

is that you can't have a great school
without great teachers.

How is it possible that all three of
these rectangles have the same area?

When you see a great teacher,
you are seeing a work of art.

You're seeing a master,
and it is as, I think,

unbelievable as seeing a great athlete

- or seeing a great musician.
- Add them all up.

What do we do to find the money?

Look past all the noise and the debate,

and it's easy to see.

Nothing will change without them.

What happens when
a school fails a kid?

What happens over time?

Now that we know it's possible

to give every child
a great education,

what is our obligation
to other people's children?

Sometimes, I think it's easier to think
of the millions of children

who are in our schools,
and look at the numbers,

and all of the problems,
scratch our heads,

throw up our hands and give up,

rather than look at just one...

"...to spike..."

...and ask ourselves,

"Did we do the right thing?
Did we do enough?"

As long as she has the VGA,
I'll just hook it up.

OK. We're done.

Sixth-grade males.

In column A here,

I've assigned every student
a lottery ID number.

And you have a one-preference
if you live in district

and a two-preference
if you live out of district.

I looked at random
numbers compared to each other,

and ran it about a hundred times,
and they never matched.

Go like this. Cross your fingers.

I got a good feeling about this.

Charter law,
which allows these schools,

requires that if you have more
applications for a grade in your school

than you have spaces available,

you must hold a random,
public drawing...

We must conduct the lottery
and it's a random selection.

You see the cages up here.
It's a random selection.

You all have your numbers, right? OK.

OK, Daisy, let's go.

The spaces with the Xs is for all
of the fifth-grade students

that are moving into the
sixth grade for next year.

We're gonna start
with the kindergartners

and first and second graders,

with some of the people
on the wait list at the end.

Are you nervous? No? I am.

Come on, Daisy, cross your fingers.

Let's get started.

Twenty.

E-V-two-zero-one-five, accepted.

E-V-two-zero-four-four, accepted.

Fregoso, Andrew.

Cabrera, Alondra.

Imani Richardson. Arilay Rich.

Genia Miller.

Giselle Mitchell.
Brittany Adams.

I'm so sad they didn't say me.

Ten.

Twenty-eight.

Damari Shineri.
Antonio McCleary.

Daphne Alescas.
Omarion Lawrence.

Pablo Blanco.
Ronelle Laborio.

E-V-two-zero-zero-seven,
accepted.

E-V-two-zero-zero-eight,
accepted.

E-V-two-zero-zero-nine,
accepted.

Lovon, Faigon.

Calderon, Michael.

Fammah Fatimata. Justin Marin.

Jamelle Fall. Muthar Diallo.

Gabriella Sanchez.
Abrama Dione.

Jasmine Wenz. And Ishmael Sy.

- They didn't say me.
- It's fine.

And our accepted second graders.
Emmanuel...

- Oh, wow.
- Tyrell Chapman.

EV-two-zero-two-one, accepted.

EV-two-zero-two-two, accepted.

We're gonna be in the next one.

- EV-two-zero-two-six, accepted.
- You got it!

EV-two-zero-two-seven, accepted.

EV-two-one-six-nine

through EV-two-one-eight-two.

Sophia Rodriguez.
Julia Flete.

Windsor Washington.
Matthew Algarvo.

Edrisa Cohen. Jada Carson.

Soliz, Juan.

Delacruz, Yesenia.

Serrano, Joseph.

Barrajas, Augustine.

Sean Corazaca.

Fanta Cesa.

Mohammed Ambi. Becar Berry.

Buvicar Turay.

Hazeline Gonzalez.

Welcome to Harlem
Success Academy Two!

Welcome, all scholars.
We are so excited to meet you.

Nine.

Twelve.

Eighteen.

Twenty-two.

The remaining numbers
will be on our waiting list.

Sixteen.

Thirteen.

Twenty-seven.

Three.

Thank you to all
of you for being here.

Give yourselves a round of applause.
Thank you.

For families who are on the waiting
list, you should receive at some time

the early part of next week, confirming
where you are on the waiting list.

And here we go, our final five.

Students, thank you. Parents...

We are really excited
to serve your children.

And here they come, our last group.

What can I say?

Yeah. I won't give up on my kids.

OK.

Don't cry. You gonna
make Mommy cry. OK?

I told Francisco,
Mommy's trying to get you

into a good school, a better school.

It was much easier for me,

knowing that if he didn't get in,

for him not to be here,

'cause then, on my way home,

I could get my thoughts together.

There are just so many
different parents out there

that want so much
for their children.

We know we have
the tools to save those kids.

People are doing it
every day, right now.

You know, the status quo can be
changed, but it takes a lot of outrage

and a lot of good examples,

leading people to say yes,
we can do this.

We can show that this is different.

The question is,
do we have the fortitude

that it would take
as a city and as a country

to make the difficult decisions
that would be necessary?

If we give up,
then what is the result?

What is the result?

Superman!

The children
are all right, Miss Lane.

- Just a little shaken up.
- Oh, thank goodness.

- And Wagner? What about him?
- See for yourself.

Someone destroyed
his ability to think.

I would love to say it's all fixed,

and everybody says, "Oh,
great, great, we believe now."

No. It is every day,
you are back in the struggle,

saying to these kids, "Don't give up,"

so kids believe again
that education is a way out.

Hello. Yes, ma'am, he is. Hold on.

Hello.

- Hello. Is this Anthony?
- Yes.

Hi, Anthony. It's Mrs. Inman

from the SEED Public Charter School.
How are you?

- Fine.
- You're fine?

What did you think about the lottery?

It was OK, but it could've been better
if I would've got in.

I'm actually calling
with some good news.

So we reconciled all of our numbers,

and we were able to move students
up to be enrolled,

and I was so excited
to see your name.

We have a space for you.

Thank you.

- How's it going?
- Fine.

- Good. How was your summer?
- Good.

Good? If I can just
get you to sign in, ma'am.

- I need to sign him in?
- Yes, ma'am.

- You just sign right by his name there.
- Just give me a second.

How you doing? Mr. Bagley,
your life skills counselor.

Mr. Michaels. Life skills counselor.
So how are you guys doing?

- Hi. Fine. How are you?
- In here, sir.

You're the first one, so you can choose
what you want, one of the three beds.

I want this one.

No, I want that one.

- Love you.
- Me too.