Preview of Article:
Superhero School Reform Heading Your Way
Illustrator: Michael Duffy
Long before director Davis Guggenheim jumped out of a phone booth in his Superman costume, I spent three decades as a high school teacher in Paterson, one of New Jersey’s poorest cities. Paterson had its own 15 minutes of school reform fame in the 1980s, thanks to Principal Joe Clark, whose bullhorn and baseball bat were featured in another superhero school movie, Lean on Me, a sanitized version of Clark’s reign of error at Eastside High School.
Watching this year’s rise to fame of Michelle Rhee, the former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor who is one of the heroes of Guggenheim’s Waiting for “Superman,” I was struck by how the targets had changed. Clark’s baseball bat was aimed at the young black males who were demonized as a criminal element in the schoolyard. Rhee’s weapon was a broom to sweep away all those lousy teachers and their unions.
But what hasn’t changed is the use of emotionally charged images and simplistic rhetoric to frame complicated issues about public education in ways that promote elite agendas.
Across the country, Waiting for “Superman” has mobilized celebrity star power and high-profile political support for an education “reform” campaign that is destabilizing even relatively successful schools and districts while generating tremendous upheaval in struggling ones.
