How hot a topic is education reform in Ann Arbor? Big enough to get more than 1,600 people to line up single file in front of the Michigan Theater on a Wednesday night.
The crowd packed into the theater to hear a cross section of education leaders including U-M researchers, and state, local and union leaders discuss the new documentary “Waiting for Superman” after a public screening.
“There’s probably no more important issue than improving education in this country,” School of Education Dean Deborah Ball told the audience as she moderated the talk. “We are trying to contribute to the discussions you and others will have to make us all think about what we should be doing.’’
The film by the Academy Award-winning director of “An Inconvenient Truth,” has gained attention from public officials and the media. Its state premier in Royal Oak was attended by Gov. Jennifer Granholm and other leaders, and made front-page news; students portrayed in the film already have visited President Obama at the White House.
By 2020, the film argues, 123 million U.S. jobs will be high skill/high pay but it’s estimated that only 50 million Americans will be qualified for them, one of the reasons tech companies often have to import workers from other nations where education attainment levels are higher.
If U.S. schools could replace the 6 percent of teachers whose performance records are the lowest and replace those poor performers with teachers with average skills, the United States would return to having the best students in the world, a university researcher argues in the film.
“The film should be used as a foundation to look at how to make our schools better,” said Scott Page, director of the Center for the Study of Complex Systems and a friend of “Waiting for Superman” filmmaker Davis Guggenheim. “This isn’t about adults arguing, it’s about making schools better.”
In a videotaped introduction to the audience, Guggenheim thanked Page and political science professor Jenna Bednar for their help and noted U-M leads the nation in Teach for America volunteers who are helping improve U.S. schools.
Michael Flanagan, state superintendent of public instruction, said Michigan has done more to raise school standards in recent years than it did in the previous 50 years, noting that all students now are required to take algebra in high school and take the ACT test, while only a third of school of districts previously had an algebra requirement.
Susan Dynarski, a professor of education and public policy who has studied the success of charter schools, stressed building on success: “What matters is what’s working for the kids.”
The film praises charter schools and criticizes teachers unions and their contracts for protecting bad teachers, noting that only one out of every 2,500 teachers ever loses his or her job due to tenure protections while one out every 57 doctors lose his or her medical licenses for malpractice. The film shows an effort in Washington D.C., the nation’s worst performing school district, to nearly double teachers’ salaries in exchange for giving up tenure, a proposal the union would not allow its members to vote on.
Representing unions, Brit Satchwell, president of the Ann Arbor Education Association, discounted some of the films’ arguments, telling the audience, “When you feel deep emotions, it feels like the truth.”
Brian Rowan, the Burke A. Hinsdale Collegiate Professor of Education, said, “We have lots of well-developed interventions. If we implemented them, kids would be learning more.”
