(The above is the abridged Web version of No Textbook Answer: Communities Confront the Achievement Gap. The full half-hour version will be presented around the country on public television in the spring of 2011. You can get a free DVD of the full film by visiting our website: kettering.org/achievementgap.) The new film, Waiting for Superman, is getting a lot of buzz for the dramatic way in depicts how our national education system allows so many children to languish and fail, despite the fact that we know how to create good schools that can produce high-achieving students, no matter what their socioeconomic background. Waiting For Superman produces a palpable sense of outrage and a demand for change. But what change? What are the parents of failing children, and the concerned citizens who see generations of kids being set up for failure and eventual dependence, to do? Waiting for Superman, probably wisely, doesn’t offer an explicit answer, but the implicit command the movie leaves viewers with is, “Demand change.” But demand change of whom? And how? Where is the influence to come from? Voting? How is voting for a school board member, a levy proposal, a governor, even a President, going to register that demand for change, let alone give a parent a voice in what the change should be? Where Waiting for Superman says, “Demand change,” No Textbook Answer says, “We must be the change. ” By “we,” No Textbook Answer: Communities Confront the Achievement Gap, means we as parents …
Video Rating: 0 / 5
Corita, Breaking (all) the rules, Jundt Art Museum
Video Rating: 5 / 5