The defeat of Washington, D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty should worry fans of education reform, but the upcoming documentary “Waiting for Superman” should give them hope.
Fenty’s term as mayor began with adulation and ended in ignominy. Observers blame his loss — only four short years after sweeping into office on a reformist platform — on his attempts to reform education generally, and specifically on his schools chief Michelle Rhee.
Rhee, of course, is the controversial and publicity-friendly bane of the teachers’ unions, which spent big money to defeat Fenty and presumably end Rhee’s tenure atop D.C. schools.
Fenty’s defeat is a warning to would-be reformers from the unions and a lesson in how small and tenuous the elected constituency for education reform really is.
President Barack Obama made education reform at least a rhetorical priority when he championed over $4 billion in funds for the Race to the Top program, which would seek to implement some merit-based pay for teachers and drive states to compete to improve student test scores.
While this step was encouraging and signaled a willingness on the president’s part to work with reformers, his lack of support of Fenty and Rhee — reformers in his own backyard — is concerning.
There is often in education a vague sense that something is wrong, and a correspondingly vague instinct toward fixing it. No one is satisfied with our education system, with good reason.
Yet voters can usually only agree long enough to send more money in the direction of schools, an approach that assuages some guilt and does little to affect student performance.
An upcoming documentary will throw the education crisis into stark relief. “Waiting for Superman,” from the same filmmaker of “An Inconvenient Truth,” is poised to explode into the public consciousness when it opens in select markets next weekend.
“Waiting for Superman” follows five children and their families as they navigate the maze of modern schooling, public, private and charter. The documentary also chronicles Rhee’s efforts to reform the D.C. school system, efforts that may be doomed if Fenty’s defeat leads to Rhee’s dismissal.
As John Heilemann recounts in New York Magazine, “Waiting for Superman” documents what happened after Rhee proposed a reform that would have made it possible for teachers to make up to $130 thousand per year, in exchange for a merit pay system that would limit tenure and tie employment and pay to student performance.
In other words, Rhee proposed that teachers be evaluated by how good they are at their jobs. The teachers’ union leadership initially didn’t allow a vote. After months of stonewalling, the union finally let its members vote — and it passed easily. It seems even teachers are hungry for reform.
If “Waiting for Superman” has the effect that its backers hope for and unions fear, it will remind people — remind voters — that education reform isn’t mainly about teachers and money at all.
It’s about kids. It’s about giving them a chance. It’s about political courage, innovation and doing something different, because what we’ve been doing clearly doesn’t work. It’s about charter schools, of all kinds. It’s about opening new schools and closing them if they fail. It’s about giving parents meaningful choices instead of watching them wait and hope to get lucky enough to win a charter school lottery, or make enough money to move to a neighborhood with better schools.
Fenty’s loss made this week an eventful one for the cause of educational reform.
“Waiting for Superman” may make next week more important by far.
Reach Will at wmunsil@asu.edu
