To:Rethinking Schools
From the Desk of:Lois Lane, reporter,Daily Planet
Date:November 1, 2010

As soon as I heard about the filmWaiting for Superman, I knew I had to chat with Clarks foster mother. I called her in Kansas:Mrs. Kent, you must be so proud that Clark is a Hollywood star, the champion of public education. What do you think of the film?

Lois, actually the film is very disturbing to me. As you know Clark suffered from a severe personality disorder; it was more debilitating than kryptonite. His savior fantasy was relentless. He would sneak out of the house and slip into tights and a cape in phone booths and then insist that the people need to be rescued from evil and removed from their communities for their own protection

A few weeks later, I attended a preview ofWaiting for Superman, followed by a panel discussion with Lesley Chilcott, the producer. I was hoping to get a scoop for theDaily Planet. Echoes of this salvation narrative filled the auditorium.We(reformers) are saving the (mostly Black and Brown)childrenfromthem(teacher unions, public schools). Audience members asked why there was no discussion of how disinvestment and inequitable school funding had ravaged communities of color; why there was no mention of the substantial private sector dollars that have been contributed to charter schools or the Harlem Childrens Zone; why good public (non-charter) schools were left out of the story; why powerful community organizing in urban communities across the nation was nowhere to be found in the film; why schools in states without teacher unions werent doing so well.

Chilcott responded, This is just a film. A film cant do everything and cant contain all of the stories. We needed to tell a strong narrative about the crisis in public education and why we need to save these children. We couldnt dig deeply into other issues like finances or race.

I worry about salvation stories from people who argue that the public only understands simple narratives. Public education has historically betrayed, and miseducated, poor communities and communities of color. But how we tell that story matters. Like cutting out construction paper figures, film edits are strategic and political not idiosyncratic or accidental.Waiting for Supermans racialized drama and affect animates the crisis of public education by bleaching out histories of racism and class exploitation, inequality gaps, finance inequities and the privatization of the public sphere. Chilcott told the audience: We chose the lottery as the spine of the film because it was the cruelest metaphor we could find to represent the crisis in public education.

I turned to the person next to me, Did she say cruelest or coolest?Cruelest.Unions are blamed for the sadism of the lottery, while charter schools, laminated from critique, save the day.

I let my mind wander into the editing room whereWaitingwas produced, to imagine what else was excised from the film. I dont have x-ray vision, but it wasnt hard to see through some of this smokescreen. The missing stories and context were endless, but fourstories not toldmay suffice: questions of money, charters real performance, communities enraged and yet held hostage by corporate takeover of public institutions, and the unanswered question of who is responsible for the public good when privatization fails.

Money

Questions of money haunt this film largely for the mute button pressed when fiscal matters arise. Critical aspects of financing are aggressively neglected. First, the grotesque, cumulative consequences offinance inequityin low-income communities of color are never mentionedthe unpaid educational debt that Gloria Ladson Billings has so eloquently described. The decay of urban education is represented as an inevitable consequence of being public and unionizedno mention that these schools have been starved for resources for decades.

Thus it is curiousto the point of falsificationthat the economics behind the Harlem Childrens Zone, for instance, are not explained in the film. HCZ outspends local schools at $16,000 per child in the classroom annually, and thousands more in out-of-class spending. This highly praised model for reformnow being exported to England and Europereceives two-thirds of its funding from private sources. Indeed, HCZ received over $50,000,000 last year in private contributions and recently celebrated a grant from Goldman Sachs for $20,000,000. These investments may support good programs, but private contributions cannot replace public investment. Left behind are questions of sustainability, equity, what happens to the schools and community-based organizations outside the promise zone, and the democratic control of public institutions.

Second, and in contrast, the film makes no mention of the stunning evidence that is accumulating thatstrategic public investment matters. It would have been easy, and ethical, to include the remarkable academic gains accomplished through finance equity funding in New Jersey, or examples of high-quality traditional public schools in low-income communities. As David Sciarra of the Education Law Center in Newark, NJ, pointed out in response to Mark Zuckerbergs $100 million Facebook pledge: The state cut $42 million from the Newark schools this year, resulting in a loss of 500 teachers and staff. The Zuckerberg pledge$20 million per year over five yearscomes at an opportune time. But it cannot replace fair state funding, sustained on an annual basis.

Third, and perhaps most occluded, are questions aboutwho is subsidizing the production of demandwho are the 21st century Mad Men behind this campaign? Who is making money in the rush to charter, who is spending money to fuel the unrelenting narrative of public education as a failure and who is subsidizing the popular clamorboth real and manufacturedfor alternatives? How is power being reconstituted out of the hands of communities and into the pockets of an elite financial sector whom Diane Ravitch has called the billionaires boys club? How are pain and profit braided?

An article by Juan Gonzalez, writer for theDaily News, sheds some light on the cost of marketing charter schools in New York City, in this case, the Harlem Success Academy:

The cruel lottery was, after all, a well-financed advertising campaign mobilized to produce a public performance of desperation and demand. Many public schools are over-subscribed and by law use a lottery, but send a letter in the mailwithout staging a high drama auction for admission.

Fourth, we hear little of the irony that the very people who are celebrating Facebook, hedge fund, Gates, Broad and Walton investments in charters are the very people who object to tax reform and advocate radical cuts in public education budgets. This shameful parody could be no more apparent than in Newark. Imagine a cartoon showing New Jersey Governor Chris shaking hands with Facebooks Zuckerberg. The caption could read, Manhattan was purchased for $24 in 1626; Newark was purchased for $100,000,000 in 2010.Priceless, with a smiling Mayor Corey Booker in the background.

Who needs evidence?

If issues of money are silenced in the film, empirical evidence on the well-studied impact of charters is severely distorted.

Late last night, with the help of Jimmy Olson, I snuck back into the editing room of the movie and almost slipped on a simple thank-you note:

Indeed.

The best national data, published in the CREDO study by Stanford University researchers, suggest that 17% of charters outperform neighboring schools, and the New York City data are somewhat better than national averages. National and small local studies consistently document that charters tend to be more segregated than neighboring schools, exacerbate local patterns of segregation, under-enroll English language learners and special education students and have high attrition or charter leakage/push-out rates.

Ive attached a compilation of charter impact studies cataloguing the empirical evidence in terms of student achievement, equity, charters impact on segregation/integration, levels of parent engagement, experience of educators and levels of innovation and innovation contagion to neighboring schools. Needless to say, the empirical story revealed in these studiesby charter supporters, critics and agnosticsis far more complex than the Hollywood narrative.

Now, I have nothing against individual charter schools. Most of my grandchildren are working in them, for a pittance I might add, and long hours, because they cant get jobs anywhere else. But it seems clear that charters aloneenrolling 3% of all studentscant save public education. And they just might be swept into efforts to dismantle it.

A nation seduced/a nation enraged

The film advertises well the demand for charters, but fails to document the equally powerful community protests mobilized across the country, in response to what many consider a charter invasion. In many communities one can finddesirefor education alternatives braided with a double-edgedoutrage. Outrage is rightly targeted at the traditional public school system which hasnt delivered quality, equity, sustainability or democratic schooling, but outrage is increasingly directed at a charter movement that has made and broken promises to local communities, while colonizing schools no longer accessible as local public institutions.

A quick glance at another piece by Juan Gonzalez gives us a sense of the disruption and inequities experienced, for instance, during co-location of charters in existing public school buildings:

Thus, back on the editing room floor, I was intrigued to find a multi-volume collection of articles about parents in Washington, DC, casting their votes against the Michelle Rhee regime, youth in Newark demanding quality schools in their communities, grandmothers and mothers in Chicago sitting in to protect a local school from closing, educators and students in Cleveland and Watts seeking educational justice, teachers and community members throughout Harlem, the Bronx and Red Hook in Brooklyn protesting the closing of schools, the testing fiascos, the opening of charters, the abuses of mayoral control, the alienation of parents and community, the privatized, elite occupation of their public schools.

The mo(u)rning after privatization?

For more than a century, scholars, writers and educators, including Carter Woodson, W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, and many since, have published scathing critiques of racial (in)justice and public education. But these same writers have always insisted that democracy requires a well-financed and equitable public education system. Given the sustained historic commitment in the African American community for quality education, it is a perverse irony that Black and Latino pain have become the sexy lubricant for selling the privatization of education; and as infuriating that the very Wall Street hedge fund managers who got us into our current financial mess are now redesigning schools in these neighborhoods.

The ideological twinning of charter branding with public sector assault seems particularly insidious. One could imagine that the former projectthe campaign for charterswouldnt need to simultaneously attack the very base of public education. And yet although many charters began as social justice alternatives, the charter campaign has been conjoined with the hollowing and gentrification of the public sector. What began as a model of educational innovation,initiated by teacher unions, has been co-opted, under corporate leadership, into national policies for deregulation and free enterprisewith no safety net for youth or communities.

So it occurred to me that perhaps we need to anticipate what happens after this round of reformsif public systems are dismantled and privatization doesnt quite work out. I imagined asking Colin Powell to comment on questions of domestic occupation and exit, as he has on global occupations and exit strategies. I conjured his response to be something like:

When privatization fails, what is our exit strategy? Will we be able to rebuild public education after we have destroyed the infrastructure, smothered community passions, wiped out the innovation and dedication of educators, after we have curdled the desires of children?

Waiting for Supermancirculates a dangerous narrative, one more damaging for what is excluded than what is contained. We might just have to resurrect an online version of theDaily Planetto get a more complex story out, one that takes seriously the deep inequities that have historically scarred our public education system, the desires and outrage of communities seeking the best for their children, the strategic investments that would matter for all. Or perhaps we could federally subsidize mass subscriptions toRethinking Schools.

Thanks for launching this discussion,

Lois Lane (aka Michelle Fine)

P.S. To set the record straight (so to speak): Its true that 60 years ago I was head over heels in love with Superman. It was the 1950s and heteronormativity was the rage.

Today, Im no longer waiting for Superman. Im dating Zelda from theDobie Gillisshow.

Michelle Fine is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Urban Education and Womens Studies at The Graduate CenterCity University of New York.

Find out more about the campaign to protect public schools at Rethinking Schools