The American education system has numerous issues that need attention. They include incompetence of teachers and corruption, which result in poor performance of students. In 2010, Madeleine Sackler directed a documentary, which reveals the political and emotional turf wars between zoned and charter school in the Harlem region of New York City. She explores the lives of four families with African American children fighting for a spot and the Harlem Success Academy, which the most successful charter school in the region. She explains that the charter school system works through annual lotteries. Only about 400 students after trying their luck get a chance to join the system. In contrast, Bob Bowdon in his 2009 documentary looks at the quality of the public education system in American, especially in New Jersey against the backdrop of corruption. In this discourse, I will present an analysis of the two documentaries; the lottery and the Cartel.
Movie Review
The Lottery
In 2010, Sackler directed a documentary, which reveals the political and emotional turf wars between zoned and charter school in the Harlem region of New York City. In the film, she explores the lives of four families with African American children fighting for a spot and the Harlem Success Academy, which the most successful charter school in the region. She explains that the charter school system works through annual lotteries. Only about 400 students after trying their luck get a chance to join the system.
Because of the tremendous differences in the outcome of students who attend assigned zoned schools and charter schools, parents desire the later. For example, Sackler explores the plight so students who attend designated zones schools to include reduced rates of academic success. Moreover, because of the element of race in the region, the black and the white children benefit differently from the systems, for instance, Sackler notes that in Harlem, the average white eighth grader has the same performance to the black 12th grader (Sackler, 2010).
Overall, the majority of stories for the four families are heartbreaking. For example, one father who has a son in Africa states that his primary objective in moving to the US is to allow his child to attend an excellent school. He notes that the American dream is a wonderful idea, which he hopes his son partakes. However, the central conflict in the presentation is that the American dream and the benefits of a school system are presented as scum. They are dependent not on merit or hard work, but on the lottery, which is a game of gambling and chance.
However, not all people support the charter schools. Parents and teachers, for example, do not support the system, considering that charter schools do not hire unionized teachers. The unions, for instance, present them with benefits such as tenure and assured benefits, especially in public school. However, not all teachers, regardless of the union’s cover are competent. Sackler reveals that in 2008, for instance, out of the 5,000 teachers with a tenure, about 10 of them were fired. Unfortunately, the cost of firing a teacher in the city is about 250,000 dollars. Therefore, the city management and the unions prefer to keep incompetent teachers, for public school, instead of incurring the cost of firing the. The argument makes charter schools and their system more favorable and explains their success.
The Cartel
In 2009, Bob Bowdon directed a documentary where he looks at the quality of the public education system in American, especially in New Jersey. He primarily argues that while New Jersey, for example, has the highest spending level in a school in the nation, its performance qualities do not portray the expenditure. For example, in New Jersey, over 37 percent of eighth graders cannot read while more than 90 percent of students with a high school diploma performed below average in their eighth-grade math test.
Among the most important aspects, which Bowdon considers, the cause of failure of the system is corruption. In the public education system, the focus of the majority of administrators is money. In essence, the public education system is similar to a cartel in operation. For instance, he points out that at Peterson JKF high, the cost of one classroom is about 313.000 dollars per year, with a subtraction of the 55,000 dollars necessary for the salary of the teacher, each class loses about 250,000 dollars annually (Bowdon, 2009). The implication of the corruption on the public education system is visible through the dismal performance of students. For the majority of public classroom, Bowdon argues that more than half of students are either unable to read or do simple elementary calculations. Ironically, the teachers are not ashamed to flaunt their material success in the school property. Bowdon, for example, counts the number of luxury cars at the Jersey City Board of Education parking lot. They include seven Mercedes Benz, one BMW, two Infiniti, and two Lexus. Because of the corruption and the cartel management of the schools, Bowdon calls them the “soprano state.”
Moreover, the New Jersey Educational Association (NJEA), which is the primary teacher’s union, is among the bodies that propagate the corruption and dismissal results in the state. For example, Bowdon argues that administrators and teachers continue to either spend massive amounts of money on projects that do not directly enrich academics or do not work and yet the union does not take immediate action. For example, he points several examples including the Shabazz high, which spent about 30 million dollars to an athletic complex. Unfortunately, about one in every seven students in the school perform below average in mathematics and no new tutors are hired to help them. Moreover, he cites that even where the administration knows that teachers are incompetent, the union protects them.
In conclusion, the two documentaries look at the problems in the education system in America. Bowdon looks at the mismanagement of the taxpayer’s money through corruption. He considers the dismal academic performance because of the limited resources available to students and the incompetence of teachers and recommends that policymakers should increase the number of public schools. He argues that it would foster competition that would force administrators to focus on education. On the other hand, Sackler looks at the differences in performance between the charter and zoned schools. She notes the incompetence of teachers and the protection from unions. She concludes that policymakers should support charter schools on the premise of their performance.
