I plan to see it. It get's good reviews as uplifting, fictional entertainment, but it's corporate-controlled viewpoint and deliberate misinformation keep it
far removed from a documentaary label.
from wiki:
Critical reception
The film has earned praise and criticism from commentators, reformers, and educators.[6] As of 1 January 2011, the film has a 88% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.[7]
Roger Ebert gave the movie 3.5 stars out of 4 and wrote, "What struck me most of all was Geoffrey Canada's confidence that a charter school run on his model can make virtually any first-grader a high school graduate who's accepted to college. A good education, therefore, is not ruled out by poverty, uneducated parents or crime- and drug-infested neighborhoods. In fact, those are the very areas where he has success."[8] Scott Bowles of USA Today lauded the film for its focus on the students: "it's hard to deny the power of Guggenheim's lingering shots on these children."[9] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film an A-, calling it "powerful, passionate, and potentially revolution-inducing."[10] The Hollywood Reporter focused on Geoffrey Canada's performance as "both the most inspiring and a consistently entertaining speaker" while also noting it "isn't exhaustive in its critique."[11] Variety noted the film's production quality as "deserving every superlative" and felt that "the film is never less than buoyant, thanks largely to the dedicated and effective teachers on whom Guggenheim focuses."[12] Geraldo Rivera praised the film for promoting discussion of educational issues.[13] Deborah Kenny, CEO and founder of the Harlem Village Academy, made positive reference to the film in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece about education reform.[14]
Of note is the number of conservative critics who have praised the film, despite the director's progressive liberal stance.[15] Joe Morgenstern, writing for the Wall Street Journal, gave the movie a positive review saying, "when the future of public education is being debated with unprecedented intensity" the film "makes an invaluable addition to the debate."[16] WSJ's William McGurn also praised the film in an op-ed piece, saying it is a "stunning liberal expose of a system that consigns American children who most need a decent education to our most destructive public schools."[17] Kyle Smith, for the New York Post, gave the movie 4-and-a-half stars, calling it an "invaluable learning experience."[18] Forbes Melik Kaylan similarly liked the film, writing, "I urge you all to drop everything and go see the documentary Waiting For "Superman” at the earliest opportunity."[19]
However, the film also received various criticisms. Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com gave a negative review of the movie, saying that while there's "a great deal that's appealing," there's also "as much in this movie that is downright baffling."[20] Melissa Anderson of The Village Voice was critical of the film for not including enough issues, saying, "macroeconomic responses to Guggenheim's query...go unaddressed in Waiting for "Superman", which points out the vast disparity in resources for inner-city versus suburban schools only to ignore them."[21] Anderson also noted that the animation clips were "overused." Meanwhile, in New York City, a group of local teachers protested one of the documentary's showings, calling the film "complete nonsense."[22]
Concerns about accuracy and motives
A study done by Stanford University found that charter schools on average perform about the same or worse compared to public schools."The film dismisses with a side comment the inconvenient truth that our schools are criminally underfunded. Money's not the answer, it glibly declares. Nor does it suggest that students would have better outcomes if their communities had jobs, health care, decent housing, and a living wage. Particularly dishonest is the fact that Guggenheim never mentions the tens of millions of dollars of private money that has poured into the Harlem Children's Zone, the model and superman we are relentlessly instructed to aspire to."
— Rick Ayers, Adjunct Professor in Education at the University of San Francisco[23]
Author and academic Rick Ayers lambasted the accuracy of the film, describing it as "a slick marketing piece full of half-truths and distortions."[23] In Ayers' view, the "corporate powerhouses and the ideological opponents of all things public" have employed the film to "break the teacher's unions and to privatize education", while driving teachers' wages even lower and running "schools like little corporations."[23] The film does, however, note that since 1971, inflation-adjusted per-student spending has more than doubled, "from $4,300 to more than $9,000 per student," but that over the same period, test scores have "flatlined." Ayers also critiqued the film's promotion of a greater focus on "top-down instruction driven by test scores", positing that extensive research has demonstrated that standardized testing "dumbs down the curriculum" and "reproduces inequities", while marginalizing "English language learners and those who do not grow up speaking a middle class vernacular."[23] Lastly, Ayers contends that "schools are more segregated today than before Brown v. Board of Education in 1954", and thus criticized the film for not mentioning that in his view, "black and brown students are being suspended, expelled, searched, and criminalized."[23]
Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education at New York University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, similarly criticizes the accuracy of the film.[24] Ravitch notes that a study by Stanford University economist Margaret Raymond of 5000 charter schools found that only 17% are superior in math test performance to a matched public school, casting doubt on the film's claim that privately managed charter schools are the solution to bad public schools.[24] The film does note however that most charter schools do not outperform and that it focuses on those that do. As well, the film explicitly stated that 1 in 5 charter schools (close to the 17% statistic previously stated) were the overreaching, superior charter schools. Ravitch writes that many charter schools also perform badly, are involved in "unsavory real estate deals" and expel low-performing students before testing days to ensure high test scores.[24] The most substantial distortion in the film, according to Ravitch, is the film's claim that "70 percent of eighth-grade students cannot read at grade level", a misrepresentation of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.[24] Ravitch served as a board member with the NAEP and notes that "the NAEP doesn't measure performance in terms of grade-level achievement", as claimed in the film, but only as "advanced", "proficient", and "basic". The film assumes that any student below proficient is "below grade level", but this claim is not supported by the NAEP data.
Princeton professor Cornel West said "I have great love and respect for brother Geoffrey Canada. But I had a deep critique of the film, in which he was central. Waiting for "Superman" scapegoats teachers’ unions. Yet those countries with the best education systems in the world, like Finland, have over 90% of their teachers unionized, and their students take few, if any standardized tests. In Finland there are 2 teachers in classrooms of 14. Teachers receive the salaries of many of our businesspeople. 15% of their college graduates teach in schools rather than make their way to Wall Street to be millionaires. They reflect a fundamentally different set of priorities in America. And if we don’t adapt to those priorities, we will continue to scapegoat, demonize & thereby undercut the morale of our teachers."
