Waiting for Superman: Follow-Up

The clip that we watched of Waiting for Superman yesterday focused primarily on the difficulty of educational reform due to the inability to fire unionized, tenured teachers. The case study we read described this problem as well.

Charter schools present a new way to tackle education reform in large part because principals can fire teachers and charter boards can close down schools that do not function well. According to Waiting for Superman, charter schools should be doing significantly better than public schools for this reason. Nevertheless, this has not been the case.

This article describes the oversimplification of Waiting for Superman. (The links in the article especially illustrate the point.) Though the ability to fire under-performing teachers seems like a fantastic solution, it alone will not create meaningful change in schools. Charter schools do not perform significantly better than public schools, so changing the structure of teachers unions is one of those "too good/simple/easy to be true" solutions.

As we discussed in class, education reform needs a multi-pronged approach, and prospects can be bleak. Blaming the problem on teachers unions fails to address the deep-seeded problems in our public education systems.