Dynamic documentarian Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) weaves together the stories of students, families, educators and reformers to shed light on the failing public school system and its consequences on the future of the United States. In this Sundance Audience Award winner for Best Documentary, Guggenheim deftly examines the options to improve public education and provide America's teachers and students with the help they need. - taken from Netflix.com
This was sort of an eye-opener. Though society, and myself, see Education as a whole for our country as deteriorating, this documentary brings it into closer focus. It is worse than that. I felt it was put together very well, though a bit centered on what many consider to be low-income/poverty areas. A few of the ideas I could see being applied even to just regular public schooling (the bad teachers, tenure, etc). Though the film tried to state that this is occurring in almost all school districts, they focused it in highly populated, lower urban areas on both coasts (NYC and LA) and threw in a couple other places for a supposed equal comparison (Wash., DC, and the Silicon Valley area of CA). Much emphasis was put on the lotteries certain schools (not considered regular public schools) use to fill slots available when there are more applicants than slots.
As I said, though the film does appear to mention several theories of how the education system can change, and other problematic issues occurring based on governmental control (on all levels), there is obviously nothing that has been corrected. One short piece centered around how dramatically one 'type' of charter-type school made changes, and was able to produce the results in an additional 80-some odd places, but again they were all low income urban settings.
Overall somewhat informative, though depressing, I give it 3 stars.
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