Review: Waiting for "Superman"

Davis Guggenheim, the filmmaker behind the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth (2006), begins his latest documentary with a confession. Each morning, he drives past the lacklustre public schools in his Washington, D.C., neighbourhood, and drops his kids off at an out-of-district private school. In a voiceover, he admits that he is one of the lucky ones. He has the privilege and means to ensure his children get a decent education.

Waiting for "Superman"is a rallying cry on behalf of the single moms and unemployed dads fighting to help their bright, eager kidsget ahead in the U.S. educational system.

His new film, Waiting for "Superman," is a rallying cry on behalf of the unlucky ones the single moms and unemployed dads sweating it out as they fight to help their bright, eager kids win spots at charter schools, which could put them on the path to a college education. As Guggenheim explores the dysfunctional U.S. public school system that is failing these families, he uncovers alarming statistics, anecdotes and video footage that will make you want to shake your fist at the screen in anger.

Guggenheim presents an impressive amount of detailed information to paint a portrait of a system that's broken, starting with footage of all of the presidents (from Reagan to Clinton to Bushes Sr. and Jr.) who paid lip service to making education a priority (remember No Child Left Behind?). In a swift, accessible blend of animated graphics, archival footage and talking-head interviews, the director shows that few of those promises were fulfilled.

In 2010, the country that once aimed for 100 per cent proficiency in math and reading is sitting somewhere closer to an average of 25 per cent. Out of 30 developed countries round the world, the U.S. ranks 25th in math scores. Not only that, many American teachers underperform, a fact former Milwaukee school superintendent Howard Fuller illustrates in a dispiriting anecdote about the so-called "Dance of the Lemons," an annual ritual in which school principals get together to shuffle the unwanted duds they have on payroll from school to school. Thanks to tenure and unions, none of these lacklustre educators is fireable. (In a sobering comparison, in Illinois, one in 57 doctors every year loses their licence due to incompetence, while in teaching, only one in 2,500 is let go.)

A lot of statistical data is presented in Waiting for "Superman", and in an effort to make it palatable, Guggenheim occasionally resorts to breezy montage sequences set to songs like Takin' Care of Business and Green Day's American Idiot to keep things humming along. This is a necessary technique, and using clever snippets from School of Rock and The Simpsons to make a point about deadbeat teachers provides welcome laughs. In other instances, however, the director relies too heavily on the Michael Moore playbook. For example, using archival footage of Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier during a segment on the class issues related to low reading scores feels overly simplistic.

Yet this is a small quibble, because Guggenheim has something that Moore's bombastic docs sorely lack: real human stories. For all the information it relates, Waiting for "Superman" is ultimately about five kids who are itching to learn, and it's their struggles that supply the film's most urgent, stirring passages.

During the course of the doc, we meet Antony, an underprivileged Washington, D.C., fifth grader with a gift for math; Daisy, an alert, keen fifth grader who dreams of becoming a doctor; Francisco, a Bronx first grader who's floundering in an overcrowded school; Bianca, a Harlem kindergartener whose remarkable single mom, Nakia, is determined to give her the education she never had; and Emily, an affluent eighth grader, who fears that "tracking" in high school could sink her chances of attending college. The odds are against each of them, as they must enter random lotteries in the hopes of winning coveted slots at the academically rigorous charter schools that could help them truly thrive.

Along with these fiercely compelling youngsters, Waiting for "Superman" offers two genuine heroes: Michelle Rhee, the ballsy chancellor hellbent on improving Washington, D.C.'s public schools, and Geoffrey Canada, an education reformer so articulate and charismatic, he deserves his own movie. A former South Bronx kid who is now president of the Harlem Children's Zone, Canada exudes passion and smarts, and his voice gives the doc a surprisingly optimistic tone. At one point, he notes: "We know we have the tools to save those kids people are doing it every day."

Both Rhee and Canada bemoan a system that's mired in bureaucratic red tape and union rules that have more to do with protecting adults, while kids with potential slip through the cracks on a daily basis. Though Waiting for "Superman" is a bit one-sided in some of these arguments American Federation of Teachers leader Randi Weingarten emerges as a real baddie by the film's close, you'll be hard-pressed to disagree.

Scenes recording the tense, expectant looks on the kids' faces as they wait for their numbers to be called on lottery day are as nail-biting as any thriller, and are all the more horrifying because they're real. Contrary to everything their families have been promised, some of these children will get left behind. With no Superman in sight, Guggenheim argues, what happens next is up to all of us.

Waiting for "Superman" opens Oct. 1.

Lee Ferguson writes about the arts for CBC News.