Waiting for Superman

That's the title of a documentary [watch the trailer] about failing schools in inner city neighborhoods.  It's stirred up a lot of criticism because it blames the failure of these schools largely on teacher's unions, and because it gives an intentionally distorted view of the success of charter schools.  80% of charter schools are the same or worse than their public school counterparts, but those featured in the film happen to be wildly successful.

Partway through the film, Bill Gates suddenly shows up.  The second I saw him on screen the hair stood up on the back of my neck and I realized I'd been had.  My brain clicked into gear on the topic: Identify the hidden agenda.  And I think the ulterior motive can be summarized as "Megacorp wants to raise your children."  Not only does this documentary argue that schools should be privatized, but also that kids should be going to school all year round, 8 hours a day, or-- better yet, as featured in the film-- to boarding schools.  Why not just imprison your future workers from middle school on, and put them in corporate-run "boarding schools" which can provide "better educational outcomes" than kids left at home in inner city neighborhoods?  All for the good of the kiddies, right?  And toward the destruction of their families and communities.

[This isn't really new, I suppose.  We owe K-12 schooling to Rockefellers and Carnegies and their ilk, who still exercise a great deal of control through their foundations.  And we've seen a constant expansion of hours spent in schools over the past century, most recently with the disappearance of half-day kindergarten in favor of full-day kindergarten.]

Anyone who homeschools knows that it doesn't take that much time to teach math and reading.  Kids do not need to go to school 8 hours a day all year in order to learn.  The people who want children locked away for their entire childhoods are at best useful idiots; more likely, they like the economic benefits of free child care; at worst (here I'm thinking of Gates and other elites), they're hoping to re-shape society according to whatever utopian zealotry they're currently prey to.

Hidden agendas aside, it's a heartbreaking film.  It follows a few bright, thoughtful kids as they're consigned to schools that will decimate their chances for attaining a college degree and/or a comfortable life.  Or, in some cases, they're not consigned, because they were holding a lucky number at the lottery.  The randomness, however intellectually defensible it may be, feels like an outrage when you're waiting to see if these kids get the luck of the draw.  And the rotten schools are breath-takingly rotten-- high schools where the incoming students have a 3rd grade reading level on average, and a very solid majority never graduate.

The kids in these neighborhoods are mostly going to stay in these neighborhoods, or ones like them.  The idea that public schooling is a force for equality has no empirical standing as far as I can see.  Consider, by contrast, the results from a 2009 sample of over 11,000 homeschooling students, from all 50 states, who took standardized tests through one of 15 different testing services.  They were scored on reading, language, and math, and these results were combined into a "core" score.  Some of the results:

 

There was little difference between the results of homeschooled boys and girls on core scores.

Boys—87th percentile
Girls—88th percentile

Household income had little impact on the results of homeschooled students.

$34,999 or less—85th percentile
$35,000–$49,999—86th percentile
$50,000–$69,999—86th percentile
$70,000 or more—89th percentile

The education level of the parents made a noticeable difference, but the homeschooled children of non-college educated parents still scored in the 83rd percentile, which is well above the national average.

Neither parent has a college degree—83rd percentile
One parent has a college degree—86th percentile
Both parents have a college degree—90th percentile

Whether either parent was a certified teacher did not matter.

Certified (i.e., either parent ever certified)—87th percentile
Not certified (i.e., neither parent ever certified)—88th percentile

Parental spending on home education made little difference.

Spent $600 or more on the student—89th percentile
Spent under $600 on the student—86th percentile

The extent of government regulation on homeschoolers did not affect the results.

Low state regulation—87th percentile
Medium state regulation—88th percentile
High state regulation—87th percentile

In a previous study of homeschooling, reading scores were the same for white and minority students, while in math white students scored in the 82nd percentile, and minority students scored in the 77th percentile.  By comparison, that math difference is around 30 percentile points in the public schools nationally, not 5.

What's the excuse for the flat playing field among homeschoolers and the drastically tilted one among the public schools?

Given high (and rising) unemployment rates among those with less education and among minorities -- i.e. people similar to those featured in Waiting for Superman -- you have to wonder why homeschooling and tiny co-op educational arrangements are not more common in poor urban neighborhoods.  In Detroit we have communal urban agriculture, which has gotten a little bit of press.  Communal urban co-op tutoring and homeschooling would seem to be a logical thing to attempt.  Where a few shared vegetable plots have been noted to reduce crime, introduce neighbors, and generally improve morale, I would think that sharing in the education of a neighborhood's children would be even better at building cohesion.  And they'd be virtually certain to do a better job than the failing schools in inner cities.

Not so much waiting for Bill Gates in a Superman costume, as waiting for Mom, Dad, and Grandma.

 

Comments

[Ethan]

Having graded American Government papers from the Wayne County Community College District, I can tell you (as I have before) that Detroit public schools are turning out basically illiterate graduates. Not only do the Detroit youths speak a spat-upon dialect of English, but most cannot express a coherent written thought in that dialect! This is a recipe for at least 20 more years of poverty...

I don't blame the teachers, whatever the issues with the tenure system, and I'll even stand up for their unions against globally banker-imposed austerity measures (locally, Republicans.) But... if non-college educated parents can homeschool their kids into the 80th percentile, WHAT PURPOSE CAN SCHOOLING HAVE OTHER THAN TO KEEP THE KIDS STUPID!!!?

Babysitting while both parents work their corporate jobs?