Waiting for Superman and Our Responsibility

By Matt Buccelli

This past Monday, I was riding a bus back to DC from New York and happened to be sitting across the aisle from a GW student who had been in New York for an interview and became my friend for the trip.  After we exchanged the usual pleasantries (school, major, class year, etc.), and I mentioned that I worked with DC Reads, my new travel companion (David was the kid's name) asked me about what it was like to work in the DC school system.  Immediately this set off a very interesting conversation that I think says a lot both about the state of education reform in this country and about our broader responsibility as people who work in schools.



David had recently seen Waiting for Superman, and once I told him I worked in a school he could not ask me enough questions about education.  This kid was pretty chatty to begin with (that's an understatement - I had been trying to put my headphones in when he started talking to me), but I also got the sense that he was genuinely interested in learning more about education after seeing the movie, and as someone who is always down for a good conversation about education, I was happy to oblige.

David's existing perspective had been almost entirely formed by the assertions made in WFS - the first thing he said to me, almost verbatim, was "so it really seems as if the big problem is just the teachers' unions then, right?"  Regardless of your personal opinion on the movie (I had generally positive but still very mixed feelings), we know that this is simply not true.  I started from scratch and tried to use the way WFS portrays unions as a jumping off point to talk about how there are a lot of issues for schools to contend with, and shared my own personal view that the only way to solve these problems effectively is for every party in the educational process (parents, students, teachers, administrators, policymakers) to respect each other and work together.

The education gods must have been having a good time that day, because not five minutes after David and I started talking about the movie, a young twenty-something girl sitting in front of David turned around, apologized for eavesdropping on our conversation, and explained that she was interested because she teaches preschool in Ward 8 and thus had a firsthand perspective on the exact issues we were talking about.  For the next 2 hours or so, David, the teacher, and I had a lively conversation that consisted mainly of David asking questions, the teacher answering them, and me trying to chime in where I could but treading carefully and being careful to respect this teacher's experience and not saying anything that might make me sound like I didn't know what I was talking about.  The conversation touched on just about everything - from unions, to charter schools, to teacher evaluation, merit pay, and the role of standardized tests in contemporary education.

What's the broader point here?  I didn't get on the bus back to DC to have a lengthy conversation about every education-related issue under the sun, but it happened anyway.  The kid sitting across from me got on the bus with a perspective on these issues that had been almost entirely formed by a two hour documentary, and got off of it understanding that things might just be a little bit more complicated in real life.  And while I would have to say that the teacher sitting in front of David deserves the lion's share of the credit for this, it still shows how much of a difference we all can make in DC Reads by using our experience inside of the classroom to help better inform people outside of it.

Waiting for Superman was effective in the sense that it introduced mainstream audiences to the education issue, just as An Inconvenient Truth did for global warming.  But that doesn't change the fact that it also presents an overly simplistic portrayal of school reform, makes some fair points about teachers' unions but also makes it seem like they are the only thing standing between underserved kids and a good education, which isn't true, and gives the false impression that charter schools are always the answer (in reality, only 17 percent of charters outperform traditional public schools).  Waiting for Superman should not be taken as gospel, but treated as a place to start a more extended and better-informed mainstream conversation about education. 

In this regard, it is incumbent on all of us, as people who work in schools, to share our perspective, and insure that one well-produced film doesn't create legions of faux experts who, in the words of an old MTV show, think they know but have no idea.  When we talk about being advocates for our students in DC Public Schools and for just education throughout the country, we need to show that we mean it by taking advantage of opportunities to share our knowledge and experience - and become better informed when our own perspective on the challenges of school reform isn't as complete as it can be or should be. 

There is a lot of attention being focused on education right now in America.  It's up to all of us to help make the most of this opportunity by being the best informed and most willing advocates that we can be.

The Degree of Education: Why Georgetown Is and Should Be Expanding its Influence in Education

By: Marc Patterson

When Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, came to the town hall meeting in Gaston Hall on Monday May 3rd, he gave encouraging words on the power of education to transform lives. “We cannot let any child fall through the cracks, regardless of the difficulties they face at home…poverty is never destiny,” Duncan pressed the crowd of teachers, parents and Georgetown students. I cannot help but feel the disconnect however, because despite the thriving network of tutors Georgetown has created, not to mention one of the highest matriculation rates into Teach For America in the country, no Georgetown student has the opportunity to seriously engage education as a field of study through this university. In order to train both informed political advocates for education reform and teachers who will demand the reform they need to be effective, Georgetown needs a program in education. The University’s Jesuit tradition and value of social justice demand it.

I talked with Professor Heather Voke who has been the central proponent of establishing a center for education here at Georgetown. “There is a great body of knowledge about what works in the classroom, what doesn’t work in the classroom,” she says. Subjects would include education theory, development psychology and practical fieldwork. Professor Voke teaches such classes as Civic Engagement & Public Education in the Philosophy department. The center for education would fill a wider need for intellectual debate over education reform.

Despite the NCES results, Washington D.C. has been a shining exception to nationwide data. These gains can be attributed to the concerted efforts being made by trained educators coming to tackle the district’s unique challenges and to after school programs. A major contributor to the efforts, Georgetown University’s DC Reads program has been rapidly expanding over the last couple of years, and has been achieving great results. Students in the low-income schools that are served are not only reading closer to grade level, but their parents are becoming more involved in their education, and third graders are talking about going to college. And Washington DC has been by no means the only place to experience success. Renowned author Dave Eggers’ emerging ‘826 Valencia’ writing centers are stepping up their efforts across the country. On a school level, charter schools like Roxbury Prep in Boston and Harlem Children’s zone in New York have created models that are bringing disadvantaged students up to speed with the nation’s best.[1] What all of these efforts have in common is the recognition of education as a matter of social justice. They attract dedicated and enthusiastic instructors and in turn encourage them to be innovative in their educational techniques. These approaches to education are challenging the bounds of being a teacher.

The recommendations made by the House Committee on Education panel titled “Building on What Works in Charter Schools” suggest instead that we need to focus on transforming struggling public schools on the model of what has worked in the successful charter schools. What education methods are being employed at KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) schools? How does Roxbury Prep motivate its teachers? Charter schools are the “laboratories for innovation” waiting for their findings to be scaled and implemented. A degree in education at Georgetown University would provide the setting for in-depth research about effective and innovative educational techniques.

Teacher retention rates are closely examined in Freedman, et. al’s study “In It for the Long Haul…” in the Journal of Teacher Education.[2] The study takes students from the Multicultural Urban Secondary English (MUSE) credential and MA program at University of California Berkeley, and tracks their careers in schools. Their statistics show that graduates of the MUSE program have higher retention rates than the national average, with results after 5 years of 73% of teachers remaining in classroom teaching compared to a national average of 54%. Well trained teachers remain teaching because they are better equipped to have an impact on their students. Better quality teachers therefore lead to more results in the classroom, encouraging the teacher to remain and in turn the entire American education system benefits.

‘At the end of the day the problem lies in the teachers unions. They demand too much money for their lazy teachers who work only nine months of the year and who couldn’t care less about the achievement of their students.’

This kind of attitude is the single biggest barrier that we face to training and keeping good teachers. The sense of disrespect for the teaching profession played a deciding role in the Georgetown University administration crushing an effort to implement an education minor in the college last year. Professor Voke commented that there was “a resistance to the idea of education because it isn’t a professional field. It doesn’t have the same kind of status as say law or medicine. I think the resistance is that we don’t want to have that sort of stigma associated with Georgetown University.” In many ways, the fact that this stigma exists makes it even more urgent that Georgetown adopt an education program to prove that teachers can break this mold.

The purpose of the book “Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers”[3] by Dave Eggers et. al is to show that in fact teachers do not fit this mold at all. It illustrates through painstaking detail the duties of a teacher to debunk the image that teaching is not actually challenging and anyone can teach with little or no training. The effect is that thousands of great young teachers are leaving the profession early due to the low morale created by the stigma, low pay and lack of recognition.

The best way to tackle this problem is at the source of the nation’s most well respected professions. The top Universities in the United States need to embrace the academic field of education as a rigorous science, worthy of a status as high as the challenges it poses in our society. By giving the most motivated students the opportunity to delve into the complexities of education, the Universities will be at once changing the image of the teaching profession and creating the next generation of Teaching Professionals that will be advocates for further progress in the field.

According to Professor Voke, our next step towards this goal is “creating an academic community of people who are interested in the study of education. To bring together the faculty and students who are interested but don’t know about one another, who want to share knowledge.” The DC Reads advocacy committee is a start. Please join us.

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[1] House Committee on Education & Labor “Building on What Works in Charter Schools” June 4, 2009.

[2] Freedman, S. W., et. al., “In It for the Long Haul: How Teacher Education Can Contribute to Teacher Retention in High-Poverty, Urban Schools.” Journal of Teacher Education v. 60 no. 3 (May/June 2009) p. 323-37. Proquest. Web. 14 April 2010.

[3] Clements Calegari, Ninive; Eggers, Dave; Moulthroup, Daniel. “Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America's Teachers.” New York: The New Press, 2005.