Waiting, But Not Waiting, for Waiting for Superman

by T. Scott
September 16, 2010

If, as the growing buzz suggests, a new documentary will do for education reform what Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth did for awareness of global warming, then there is hope ahead.

The buzz has some foundation, given that the filmmaker who catapulted Al Gore to the stage of the Academy Awards, Davis Guggenheim, is also creator of the upcoming Waiting for Superman.

It’s funny-ironic-sad that despite too many decades of reports and books about what’s wrong with U.S. education and how to make repairs, we’re still “waiting” for a neatly packaged, cinematic solution to begin to cure what ails us. You’d think we could have figured it out for ourselves by now.

The movie trailer currently running on the web, gives no clue how the film’s title relates to the greater problem. Other parts of the website do explain that the heroes who can rush in to save us from this crisis are, in fact, all around us — brave and dedicated reformers, as well as all of us who care but may not have recognized a good opportunity to jump in.

As you can see from the loosely wrapped back-to-school package in Dome this month, we’re not waiting for a superhero or a movie to get the reform discussion revved up. Rick Cole, in his column, introduces us to Waiting for Superman, as well as a friend and colleague’s prescription for a better national education system. Former state school superintendent Tom Watkins explains, again, the severe need for organizational and funding reform — an alarm he sounded back in 2004 while serving as schools chief (a warning that ended up getting the messenger shot). Stephen Jones, in his column first posted two weeks ago, takes calls for mass teacher firings personally and explains why blaming teachers hides the real problems facing our schools.

All three get capes for their efforts, here and over the years.

A fourth goes to Doug Ross, politician-turned-educator, who leads Dome’s coverage by telling what he’s learned about improving the education of urban children based on his 10 years running a leading-edge charter school in downtown Detroit.

If you know Doug, you know there isn’t anyone better at explaining complex issues and getting folks to believe they — and his solutions — can make a difference. That’s why he was such an effective politician. And, undoubtedly, that’s why he has become such an effective headmaster, pioneering solutions to the defeating situations in Detroit and countless other urban school districts.

To Doug’s everlasting credit, his approach wasn’t to sit on the sidelines and analyze the situation. He positioned himself right smack dab in the middle of the conflict, learning, hands-on, as he and his colleagues went.

Just as interesting as his mission is his description of himself as an ex-politician. Is there such a thing for someone skilled in politics? When news of his education project first hit a decade ago, there was the normal speculation that he would do his “school thing” for a couple of years, declare it a successful venture, hand it off to others and move on to other issues. And yet, 10 years later, he is still working hard in downtown Detroit to improve the lives of his students and find ways to replicate the success for tens of thousands of others.

The greatest irony, of course, is that the ability to put real solutions in place on a broad scale depends, ultimately, and heavily, on politics. The ex-politician acknowledges as much, but chooses to leave that discussion for another time.

Maybe Waiting for Superman will push up that discussion. We need it faster than a speeding bullet.