Why Wait for Superman?

At the insistence of a friend, I watched the film Waiting for Superman directed etc. by David Guggenheim. In his voice-over, Guggenheim describes his realization that Superman would not come to save his childhood self. He comes to the realization that a science fiction hero cannot save anyone in the real world. As I watched the “docudrama” I came to the same conclusion about this film fiction.

As I watched, I waited for some reasoned explanation for the failures of America students alluded to by the movie, none was given, I waited for some solution to the problems with American education inferred by the commentator, none came.

I guess one would class the adventures of Superman as Science Fiction; Mr. Guggenheim’s film is Science Fiction too.

Here are fallacies which doom Waiting for Superman to the pile of failed Smallville episodes:

1. False Generalization: The idea that education in Finland or China is better than education in America because of comparisons of some standardized test administered to students in these different countries. This fallacy glosses over the uniqueness of each of the educational systems and concentrates on the measuring tool commonly applied. It is like saying this pile of gold is worth the same as this pile of dung, because it weighs the same, or more aptly, this pile of dung is worth more than this pile of gold because it weighs more. Guggenheim makes no effort to compare the variables which would inevitably skew any assessment of the educational systems he compares. Consider these: what is the racial and socio economic composition of the students tested? What is the language ability, how many Finns were brought up in Spanish speaking homes and taught in a second language at school as many are in America? How many American students were banished from school after the 6^th grade to work in the fields and factories, as 90% are in China, before they could take the tests rather than encouraged to continue despite their disables and challenges, as they are in America? Thus contrasting standardized test scores concocts the science fiction commonly referred to as “comparing apples to oranges.”

One other thought on this misleading assessment of the students from different countries: what is the standardized international test which is given to all the students in all the nations to justly and reasonable compare them? I have never seen such an international test. We may well be measuring in inches what others are measuring in centimeters or in cubits.

2. False Cause, (post hoc ergo propter hoc, after that therefore caused by it). The film presents four schools which all have purportedly excellent teachers and which in spite of socio-economic conditions, racial and ethnic mixture produce excellent students who do well on tests and get into college. The conclusion drawn is that if you can have such excellent teachers you can make any students into successes, rescue them from the degraded state of public education. But this is false cause. The schools: Kipp Academy, Summit Prep, Harlem Success Academy, and Seed all seem to have excellent programs, but what they do not have are the same students that the public schools they deride are required to serve. The success of these programs is far more reasonably ascribed to the admissions process. The schools claim that their students are randomly selected by lottery – this is a lie. Only those students whose parents are eagerly seeking better education for their children take the trouble and face the frustrations requisite to get their children into such programs are involved. In Bad Students, Not Bad Schools by Robert Weissberg which I quoted extensively in an earlier post, Professor Weissberg sights as one of the only reliable indicators of student success: parents’ support and the value they place in education. Thus, uniform parental support and family values centered on education are far more reasonable causes for the success of the banner schools Guggenheim touts than the false cause of teacher enthusiasm he pushes. The heart rending understory of the documentary which traces the dreams of four students is ample proof that Guggenheim and Bill Gates, also featured in docudrama, are fixated on the wrong cause. David Leven and Mike Finberg’s Kipp school offers 10 opening to the 135 desperate applicants. The fact that the winners are chosen by lot does not counter the fact that all the students applying are exceptional. It is the same for the 455 students who endure the lottery for the 110 openings at Todd Dickerson’s Summit Prep, or the 767 who vie for a chance at the 35 openings at Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Success Academy, or the 61 who clamored for the 24 openings at Charles Adams’ Seed school in Washington D C. None of these schools has to accept the legitimate cross section of society that is forced on public schools in every community in our country. To pretend, that any comparisons between them and the real trenches of American Education, is science fiction indeed.

I have nothing against super schools or the super parents that move their children into them. I would do the same if my children were forced into classrooms filled with delinquents and dullards. But this migration of the select not only raises the effectiveness of these bastions to learning, it undermines the efforts of those teachers, even the best of them, left in the public schools which are hemorrhaging good students, the only demonstrable foundation of good schools, while being required to “educate” the dross which remains. Deserted by the students which could save them, public schools face declining scores and declining quality of teachers.

Satisfied with their miscalculation, the tale spinners leap to all sorts of unfounded conclusions:

1. American students are falling behind in the competitive world of modern education.

2. Teachers are motivated by money.

3. All students are willing to work hard, given the opportunity to do so.

4. All people value the goals of liberal education and college entrance.

5. The purpose of education is to prepare workers and money earners, hence tax payers.

6. The only obstacle to universal student excellence in America is the lack of good teachers.

7. That tenure is a universal privilege granted to all American teachers.

8. That the purpose of unions is to protect the jobs of bad teachers.

9. Good teahcers can motivate bad students.

These and many other false assumptions are set out without support, critiques, or counter. We are to blithely accept that Superman is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. That if properly inspired, the man of steel can fly so fast that he can reverse the spin of the earth on its axis and turn back time.

On this rotten foundation of pseudo science Guggenheim and Gates then presume to offer a solution to the problem they have totally failed to understand or describe. The only answer to the supposed failure of American Education is to improve teachers by ending tenure and the establishment of merit pay. To hear Bill Gates, who threw millions of dollars down the rabbit hole of Small Learning Communities; a program which damaged the very educational institutions he pretended to repair; speak of this latest cure for all of American’s ills, is a comedy of errors worthy of a comic book.

I know a few things about education. I know that when teachers do better, good students do better. I also know that bad teachers can do little to harm good students.

What I do not know is how to make bad students good, or by what criteria one can measure the quality of every teacher in relation to every student. Real science cannot pretend to deal with these challenges with some blanket cure-all, superhero solution.

After watching Waiting for Superman I asked my friend for a criterion by which to measure teacher excellence. The success of the AMA and the BAR association in improving the quality of teachers was suggested. I wondered by what criteria the AMA judges doctors. When a doctor’s patient dies – that seems like a failure to me – should all doctors who lose patients be fired? Does losing a case in court constitute a failure for a lawyer, and should all lawyers who lose in court be disbarred?

I asked my friend what motivated other professionals to do their best – and it was suggested that money was the answer. I have long maintained that increasing teacher pay would improve teachers, not by motivating the ones already in service to greater excellence but by stimulating more and higher quality people to enter that field. Though admittedly, some of the finest people I know are already teachers. I would like to see the science.

The fact remains, that even if we get better teachers, which would surely benefit good students everywhere and probably inspire some mediocre ones as well, the sea of under- motivated and even antagonistic students, who lack desire from within or support from without, would still drag down scores on standardized tests and leave those who rely on science fiction waiting for Superman.