Contemplating Superman

We know what works, proclaims Waiting for Superman, the new documentary about one way to reform the public school system so that all kids have an equal shot at success. The Answer, it turns out, happens to be exactly what my colleagues and I do every day, as teachers at a high-performing charter school. According to filmmaker Davis “An Inconvenient Truth” Guggenheim, teachers unions, the practice of tenure and the bloated bureaucracy of school districts are keeping principals from stocking their schools with passionate educators committed to closing the achievement gap through high expectations, longer school days, Saturday classes and mandatory summer school. Sound familiar? The charter network I work for is especially lauded in the movie as a model of the kind of schools that work. We see five adorable Everykids try—and heart-breakingly fail, in most cases—to be accepted to these educational havens. Demand is great. Space is so limited. If we know this model works, the movie proclaims, why aren’t all schools like this?

It is a crime of epic proportions that public education in this country is so savagely unequal. I borrow the word savage from the title of Jonathan Kozol's groundbreaking book, Savage Inequalities, which came out in the early 1990s and takes on much the same issues as Waiting for Superman, albeit with a slightly different emphasis. In Kozol's book, the lavish public schools of suburban Chicago are compared to their practically derelict inner-city counterparts. The word savage is as appropriate then as it is now to describe the brutal consequences of a failed school, a failed education. The next generation is made up of children, after all; children who depend on every single one of us, whether we are their parents, relatives and teachers, or simply taxpayers and voters. We cannot fail them.

This belief put me on my current career path and takes up a great deal of my mind, heart and blog, as you all know. So, I’m the last one to argue with the need to reform public education, along with a lot of other institutions that truly aim to serve the People in all our messy complexity. But sitting in the theater watching Waiting for Superman, my feelings were decidedly mixed. Not about the movie’s ultimate message, but about the way the work I do every day was being sold to the general public. Mainstream documentaries by nature need to be punchy and overly general to stir folks up. I get that. But I’m here to propose a sequel to Waiting for Superman. Because if turning every school in America into one like mine is really The Answer, then the public also needs to be equally agitated to support the excellent, dedicated teachers we need to make this happen.

I’ll call my sequel We Are Still Standing. As the title implies, it would be about perseverance in the face of the constant onslaught that is teaching those longer hours, of never relaxing those high expectations, of insisting that you aren’t going to give up on even one kid and meaning every single word. There is a saying in our network, "The secret is, there is no secret." Meaning, all it takes is time. Lots and lots of time, given repeatedly and consistently day after day. The teacher parking lot at my school is full by 6:15 a.m. Most cars are still there at 6:30 p.m. and later. Working on the weekends--working most of the weekend-- is the norm, even if we didn’t have Saturday School nine times a year. I’m not complaining. This is the life I've chosen, and I love. I’m simply stating the reality. The movie didn’t really touch on that part. In fact, no teachers were interviewed at all. Instead, it was taken as a given that most teachers are standing by ready to throw themselves bodily across the achievement gap if only those dastardly bureaucratic, anti-kid unions and district offices weren’t holding them back. I think that’s what made me the most uncomfortable. Not the image of teachers as remarkably dedicated but the assumption that this happens in a vacuum, or that it should. The president of the biggest teachers' union has said that the movie makes it "cool" to blame teachers for all of our problems. I disagree. Waiting for Superman doesn't blame the vast majority of teachers. Instead, it puts them up on a very high pedestal by assuming that they will--and should--stand alone in the fight to improve our classrooms. The movie pooh-poohed the need for more funding (don't we spend enough already?) and, while it interviewed several dedicated parents, suggested over and over that the saviors, the "supermans" of the film were the reform-minded teachers who were ready to swoop into the rescue. Problem is, there isn't much room at the top of a pedestal, hardly any room for things like families, friends, hobbies, the ups and downs of life. Without changing the current staffing models of most high-performing charter schools, there simply isn’t a whole lot of time for teachers in schools that work to be anything other than teachers. Everyone in Waiting for Superman seems OK with that. I'm not sure how many of the 1 million teachers in this country would say the same. And I wouldn't call them "anti-child" or selfish for thinking so.

Not that I'm throwing up my hands or joining the ranks of the naysayers who say it's impossible to reform something as entrenched as unequal public education. Where such inequity is concerned, there are very few hills I'm not willing to die on. I'm saying, though, is that before we completely dismantle the organizations designed to advocate for teachers, we think about what else it will take (besides the worthy goals of ending antiquated and destructive hiring/firing practices and streamlining district offices) to make sure all of our schools can become the educational success stories we see in Waiting for Superman. We have to face the issues that high-performing charter systems are already addressing that the movie didn't mention. Issues like keeping teachers in the building for more than two years (about 40-45% of all teachers in my charter network have been teaching for under two years. The next big group has less than five years under their belts). And, related to this, supporting all the students who enter our doors to see the program through.

We won't ever have to give up our high expectations, longer hours and zeal for achievement, but if we're going to ask teachers to work the hours of CEOs and high-powered lawyers, we might have to start paying them accordingly, or figure out ways to job share and drum up community support. Even as they are being hailed for their long hours, some schools in my charter network are actually shortening their school days (from 5:00 to 4:30) and rumor has it that Saturday School may be on its way out. These are changes are meant to make the work more sustainable for the people doing it. No one could accuse us of being adult-centric bureaucrats (cause, wow, we really aren't) but it turns out that even the most committed teachers don't want to be Superman. We just want to be able to remain teachers, and we can't do it alone.

This need for balance (in more ways than one) reminds me of a low-ropes course challenge called All Aboard. It asks a group to stand up on a large springboard that wobbles from side to side. The only way to get the whole group up is to step on board one by one and then carefully balance the spring as others climb up. It doesn't take Superman; it takes teamwork and patience and not letting go. Three superheroic qualities that, if put into action, will save a lot more children than the Man of Steel ever could.

We already have so many pieces of the educational reform puzzle. Waiting for Superman is right (good teachers are vital, and every kid deserves one). My charter network is right (every single student can learn). The politicians are right (money isn't going to solve all of our problems). Parents are right (we need more schools that work). Even the president of the teachers' union is right about a few things (teachers do need to be supported rather than pitted against each other). Instead of using our favorite pieces to tilt the springboard our way (and shove everyone else off), we need to step up together to find the equilibrium we claim to want. Sound impossibly naive? Or maybe just impossible? Now who's throwing up their hands. Despite everything that's wrong, we are blessed at this time in history to have a great number of passionate and tireless reformers on the educational scene; reformers who stand unmoving behind slogans like "No Excuses" and "Whatever It Takes." If there was ever a time to move public education toward the ideal, it's now. Our kids shouldn't have to wait any longer.