waiting for superman.

this weekend waiting for superman came to colorado.

being the education nerd i am, we went to see it.

we don't have kids and whenever we start to talk about it, i always come back to "where would we send them to school?"

growing up i always figured i'd send my kids to public school. no questions asked. but after being in education and after learning more about the education system, i think you have to ask the questions before shipping kids off to the local school.

both charlie and i are products of public school. although, we're also products of parents who brought us up emphasizing the importance of school.

the movie was definitely and interesting one.

they threw a lot of facts and numbers out. i'm assuming to get people's attention.

and it worked ... there were definitely collective gasps from the audience when stats like the percentage of students who passed state examinations (ranging from the teens to about 40% in the "good" states") came up.

and of course, there was a very compelling graph showing the dollars spent on each student per year since the 1970s. let's just say there was not a positive correlation between the amount of money spent and the number of kids graduating high school.

as a teacher, i think they tried to make the issue simpler than it really is.

after watching the movie my impression was that they wanted to make 2 conclusions:

1. the public schools suck because teachers suck and as a result of tenure we cannot get rid of these sucky teachers.

2. the answer is charter schools. invest money in schools that don't have the same rules applied to them as the rest of the public schools.

now obviously, this is me oversimplifying the movie and charlie (who watched it with me) didn't see it the same way.

either way, whatever your opinion of the movie was, there's no denying that our public schools are in some serious trouble. and there's no denying that in a lot of areas, parents are forced to send their kids to schools they would never pick, if given the choice.