Making sure other people's children get a quality education

There is Anthony, a Washington, D.C., fifth-grader who lost his father to drugs and hopes to take another path; Bianca, a Harlem kindergartner whose single mom can no longer afford Catholic school tuition; Daisy, a fifth-grader from Los Angeles who dreams of college, even though her parents didn’t finish high school; Emily, a Silicon Valley eighth-grader who has unwillingly been put on a non-collegiate “track”; and Francisco, a Bronx first-grader whose school can’t provide him with the reading help he needs.

It is their stories and those of a group of education reformers currently defying the odds that Davis Guggenheim, the Academy Award-winning director of “An Inconvenient Truth,” uses to illuminate the state of public education and how it is affecting children.

But the making of  "Superman," said Guggenheim, began when he was 5 and his mother drove him past his neighborhood schools,  across the Potomac River to Virginia because “the schools in D.C. are broken.”

Forty years later in 2008, Guggenheim found himself doing the same thing with his own kids, only in Venice, Calif.

“It haunted me to think about the broken schools in my own neighborhood,” he said. “Forty years have passed and we still haven’t figured out how to give kids a good education. What if I made a film that made people care about other people’s children?”

Guggenheim, 46, has made that film. He sat down with us recently and talked about his findings and, in doing so, revealed the answer to that precise question.

Q. "Superman" seems to dispel the notion that student failure is the result of absentee parents. Is guaranteeing student success as simple as getting the best teachers in front of the classroom?

A. I talk in the movie about the problems that kids bring from home – poverty and all the environmental problems. I don’t pretend that it’s not there. It is absolutely a problem. What’s different now is this new generation of educators who are finding ways to lift the most disadvantaged kids. In the movie I use the analogy of breaking the sound barrier and the sound barrier being the belief that “those” kids can’t learn. What Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone and KIPP have proven is you can educate those kids. So it’s longer hours, high expectations, accountability and great teachers.

Q. You take us into some pretty tough, depressing neighborhoods, where we're introduced to black and Hispanic parents who obviously value education but don't always come across that way. You think most people will find this surprising?  Were yous?

A. When I first went into those neighborhoods…I didn’t know what I’d find. The amazing thing was I found that those parents were just like me and they have the same dreams for their kids as I did.

Q. The successful schools in the movie are all charters, which leaves the impression that they’re the answer to what ails the educational system. Are they?

A. No, I don’t think they are. There are some district schools that are doing great work and charter schools that are failing but some of those high performing charters are doing so well, performing so much higher than even district schools. They are providing the ingredients to success that we can use in all schools so it’s not that charters are the answer. Many fail for the same reasons other schools are failing.

Q. It’s difficult to walk away from "Superman" feeling good about teachers' unions and their stand on tenure. Is there an effort on your part or anyone to get them to reassess their position?

A. Yes. I showed the movie to Randi Weingarten (president of the American Federation of Teachers). We had lunch together and talked about the movie and she has been moving in the right direction. She just approved a new contract for the District of Columbia teachers, which is revising the terms of tenure in the right direction which means if a teacher is rated ineffective, they will lose their jobs. They’re also talking about new things like pay for performance. This is a very big exciting change.

Q. What’s your greatest hope for "Superman"?

A. I think a lot of parents are frustrated and feel like so many of our schools are broken and so they do what I did for many years, which was to take care of their own. My hope is that the film offers clarity on the issue, a sense of urgency and inspires people to take steps toward real reform.

Q. Is there anything else you’d like to say about the documentary or this issue that my questions didn’t prompt?

A. I think you can feel right now that people are finally paying attention to education and the door of opportunity has opened and I’m hoping, actually praying, that we have the will to act. I’m hoping the film is part of that – getting people to work together to give every kid in America a great education.