Teacher's unions aren't the only problem but they're a huge problem. There is no reason for primary educators to have a tenured system combined with collectively bargained raises. Teaching is an exhausting profession, even if you're passionate, it's easy to get burnt out. Having a system that makes it impossible to monetarily recognize exceptional work or get fired is a recipe for a system of low paid, mediocre teachers. I don't blame them. Probably a lot of them started out as passionate teachers but people respond to money, that's the way this country works. Waiting for Superman chose to focus on this issue because it's direct and understandable. Parental failures in low economic areas is an incredibly difficult and touch subject to discuss in a documentary made by a white person.

As for testing, I think it's often used as a front for the argument that teachers can in no way be evaluated. Does it really seem so unfair/unjust/racially biased to have a set standard of math and science benchmarks for each grade level. English and the arts are trickier but would anyone disagree with a standard that required all seniors to have a basic comprehension of "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"?

Teachers' unions are a HUGE button. But nothing compared to the current epidemic of poor parenting.

A parent's dedication to their child's educational success is extremely important. However, how could a school board, a teacher or any other person or group create parental interest? If a parent isn't very concerned with whether or not their own child is doing well is school, that is tragic; but if our society is truly in the midst of an educational crisis then we need to spend time and energy on areas where we can actually effect change. We all remember change, right? Hope? Not, "man, kids these days aren't learning what they need to - I hope someone does something about that", but "huh, we keep falling further behind the rest of the developed world so we should probably change what we are doing". Teachers Unions are clearly not the only issue, but it is a big one. Personally, I've had teachers that were so much more valuable in my education than other ones so there are not just good teachers but great ones. And we need more great teachers.

Have the writers of this movie ever read teaching contracts? Unions protect the rights of members and provide due process. Involve educators in the conversation.

I've gone to both private school and public school. I've experienced both great teachers and awful ones in both realms.

My initial public school experience in kindergarden had me reading to the other kids with most education being cut and paste. I was pulled out quickly.

The next bad teacher was second grade, private school, where we had to do TIMED quizzes, and I was falling behind because I knew my shit, but wasn't fast enough.

In the accelerated portion of public school, there were teachers whom I did not learn from due to their not caring, and some whom I did. In most of the regular classes I took, I was too ahead of the curve to care about the teachers.

I understand why teachers can be tenured, as students are fickle shits who could rally against a teacher to get them fired despite them being good, but there needs to be an easier path to firing the ones who don't actually teach.

Also, it's not just teachers. There ARE learning curves, and differing interests. Let me tell you, I dropped AP history for regular pace, and the change was more than drastic. I went from learning the ins and outs of the revolution to a teacher trying hard to teach students that Hitler was the leader of the Nazis not the American army (I'm dead serious).

....Aaaaaaaaaaand how about CORPORATE AMERIKA shelling out BIG BUCKS to keep U.S. citizens DUMB and DUMBER?

THANK YOU Paul Constant, for not drinking the neoliberal school reform kool-aid. The backers of this kind of reform have the ultimate goal of privatizing public education for the profit of the rich and politically connected- the more you learn about Obama's reform efforts the more blindingly obvious this becomes.

And @ Everyone who thinks teachers unions are the problem:

Other first world countries with compulsory education (i.e. the ones that let poor kids go to school) nearly all have strong unions. They also have strong social and welfare supports for the poor kids who they make go to school. The number one indicator of a student's failure in America is poverty. The lowest performing schools in America are all in the Southeast- states with right-to-work laws that ban unions. Not so coincidentally, the Southeast also has ingrained systems that create social injustice and extreme poverty among the have-nots.

Of course this is not conducive to an emotionally-charged documentary where we can all leave the theater with an easy answer (charter schools! fire bad teachers!) instead of examining our own culpability in the failure of our schools and our children.

@7 Are you saying bad teachers should not be fired?

"There is no reason for primary educators to have a tenured system combined with collectively bargained raises."

That's right. All unions should be abolished. Let the rich and the state pay what they feel like so the rich can keep getting richer AND reduce their taxes. Collective bargaining against your corporate/state masters is an outrage.

Teachers are slaves and should be thankful for the daily beatings we give them.

"Teaching is an exhausting profession, even if you're passionate, it's easy to get burnt out."

That's right so after we squeeze a few good years from them, let's chuck them out onto the streets so we can replace them with fodder from Teach for America. Tenur? Pensions? Why I never heard such disgusting communism.

You're an idiot Hosono.

"There is no reason for primary educators to have a tenured system combined with collectively bargained raises."

That's right. All unions should be abolished. Let the rich and the state pay what they feel like so the rich can keep getting richer AND reduce their taxes. Collective bargaining against your corporate/state masters is an outrage.

Teachers are slaves and should be thankful for the daily beatings we give them.

"Teaching is an exhausting profession, even if you're passionate, it's easy to get burnt out."

That's right so after we squeeze a few good years from them, let's chuck them out onto the streets so we can replace them with fodder from Teach for America. Tenur? Pensions? Why I never heard such disgusting communism.

You're an idiot Hosono.

@brazzbalz That's right so after we squeeze a few good years from them, let's chuck them out onto the streets so we can replace them with fodder from Teach for America. Tenur? Pensions? Why I never heard such disgusting communism.

So, you're saying that burnt-out teachers have a right to give children substandard education?

We're all pretty excited about solutions that don't spend more on education. Because before education actually gets the greater funding it deserves, we want to make ABSOLUTELY SURE we can't get the same effect for cheaper. This is the same attitude that allows us to believe that giving less tax revenue to government is the same thing as reforming government. It's the kind of pathetically lazy thinking that allows you to believe that cheap, plastic ab machine you bought will somehow make you healthier and more attractive.

That is the emphasis of nearly every political proponent of charter schools. They may not be good all the time, they may not be effective all the time. They may fail like public schools and at similar rates. But ONE thing is sure - they won't cost any more money than they already do. Vouchers? Even better.

Americans' attitude towards education has been entirely consistent over the last several decades. The cheaper the better. State universities? We hear about WASTED funding monthly. But we haven't stopped tuition from paying an ever higher proportion of the costs, while tax dollars cover less every year. Elementary schools? We jizz in our pants every time some scrappy school makes good with paltry funding and still gets results. Do we then say, "hey, let's shower money on this worthy school!" Nope. We're just pleased we don't have to pay more in taxes.

It's big-box education. High-volume, cheap labor, cheaper commodities making cheap products = good.

We may not get it right every time, but it'll be cheap every time. That's for sure. Give a broken system less money and magically it will reform itself - out of desperation. Kind of like not eating is a good way to cure cancer.

@12 I don't believe anybody is saying "do better with less." I think they're saying "We've given you more, but you haven't done better...why?"

There was one somewhat deceiving graph, which showed "amount spent per student, adjusted for inflation." What one doesn't immediately think about while watching this is the technology that has become present in the classroom. Computers, calculators, software, etc.

@7 You are confusing what tenure is and isn't. It isn't a guranteed job that one cannot be fired from. It is due process, ensuring that employees can't be fired because of the whim of an administrator or opportunistic politicians looking for a scapegoat. If bad teachers are still teaching it's because an administrator chose not to do the paperwork in pursuing termination.

@13 Actually, "do better with less" is exactly what they're saying. No Child Left Behind requires that an ever increasing percentage of students pass state tests until the year 2012 when 100% of American children are required to pass the state tests. No joke. At the same time, school district budgets are being slashed by millions of dollars.

At no point has public education in America been fully funded. The majority of a school district's funding comes from local property taxes. This means that the poorer the neighborhood, the poorer the neighborhood school. Basics that used to be provided by the district are now up to the teacher to find a way to obtain. When my mom started teaching in the 1970s classrooms were stocked with scissors, paper, etc. In my classroom this year I had to fight for a piece of the budget to get a working pencil sharpener (a fight I lost, by the way). Your observation that the increase in spending is tied to technology is very apt. I don't know what else accounts for this obscene claim that we are spending more per student then we have in the past, because that is absolutely not evident in my school or school district.

Teacher's Unions aren't the problem for most municipalities, period. They're a great scapegoat, sure, and are brought up whenever anyone has to take credit for our failing schools, but as the only non-teaching member of a family with 11+ teachers in it, most teaching in completely different municipalities, TEACHER'S UNIONS ARE POWERLESS. My brother's Baltimore City teacher's union can't get the school district to buy paper for classrooms. My father's upstate New York union couldn't keep his ratio under 35 students. I hear horror stories about the union from all of my relatives, and the fact of the matter is that the unions have been so demonized and villified, they don't even go to bat for the teachers anymore. You want someone to blame? Blame school administrators, who make six figures and don't contribute squat - and are often a barrier - to the education of our youth.

@9/10:

I'm not anti-union per se. I think it's fine for teachers to be protected against spurious charges of abuse by students (legal representation/burden of proof etc) and to have benefits/pension plans. However, it's absurdly hard to fire teachers and the fact that you can't give them bonuses and raises is in my opinion a serious issue. Tenure at the university level exists to allow professors to do controversial and important work. Likewise, collectively bargained raises make sense for steelworkers and other skilled labor professions where the variables are basically equal. But why should the people that teach our children be put in a position where they can never be fired nor be rewarded financially for great work? The statistic in the movie that 1/97 lawyers are disbarred, 1/57 doctors have their licences revoked, but only 1/2500 teachers have their licensed revoked to me is indefensible. Medicine and the law are far, far more insulated cartels that are much more expensive and competitive to gain entrance to and yet their firing rate is 25-50 times higher than teachers? Defend that...

Of course bad teachers should be fired. No one is disputing that.

And who should fire them? Principals. And why haven't they? They claim that it is because the process for firing a bad teacher is too great a burden, but that's an excuse for not doing their job. Good principals dismiss teachers without a lot of whining about how hard it is.

The continued presence of a bad teacher at a school is evidence of a bad principal at that school. There are a lot of bad principals out there.

Which is why the process for firing a teacher is what it is. That's to protect good teachers from bad principals. If principals didn't have such a bad history then the process for firing teachers would be less of a burden.