Waiting for Superman

By Emma Schmidt '11, Germantown Friends School

If Germantown Friends School’s graduation rate dipped anywhere below 100% administrators would not be happy. Imagine if that rate were only 3%.

Waiting for Superman a documentary directed by David Guggenheim, highlights one high school where only three in a hundred students graduates. The documentary follows five children in Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington D.C. as they struggle through the public school system and try to find alternative modes of schooling.

Daisy, a fifth grader from East Los Angeles, is one of these five children. With her tight ponytail and gap-toothed smile, her life story tugs at the heartstrings of the audience. Daisy’s public middle school is one of the poorest performing schools in the district, but her parents have found another option: KIPP LA Prep, a charter school. KIPP is much bigger and more beautiful than the rundown buildings of her current school.

Much of the film, which won awards at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, documents the inequalities between public and charter schools. Though still funded by public money, charter schools tend to have nicer facilities, longer school days, and most importantly, better teachers. Francisco, a second grader from the Bronx, attends a public school where his teacher will not respond to his mother’s many phone calls and emails. On the other hand, the charter school teachers shown in the film are more energetic, and often younger than their public school counterparts. It is evident throughout the film that charter schools offer a glimmer of hope among the darkness that encloses many public schools.

Waiting for Superman is a well-researched and powerful documentary. The facts support the stories of these five children, and inform the audience that this story is happening in every city in America. The stories are touching and the factual evidence is shocking; the powerful effect of the film bodes well for the change it may bring to America’s school system. Guggenheim didn’t want to highlight his own opinion on charter schools, he just wanted to raise the question, why can’t we have enough great schools?

One problem: there aren’t enough great schools out there; charter schools are just so good that everyone wants to attend them. Daisy from LA enters a lottery to get into KIPP, but there are only ten spots for 135 kids. As pointed out in the film, the probability of getting a spot is about as good as a senior’s chance of getting into Harvard. To Daisy, though, KIPP LA Prep is like Harvard: an opportunity for higher learning that exemplifies everything she doesn’t have at her local public school.

As Daisy waits to hear whether she has gotten a spot at KIPP LA Prep, she crosses each finger over the next, a trick she learned from her father for good luck, and the audience holds their breath that her name is one of the ten called.

It is not.

Daisy bites her lip as her chin quivers and she holds back tears. She will have to stay in a school with unmotivated teachers and wait another year to try again at her dream school. 

“Waiting for Superman” is a moving story that should call to action those who can make a difference in our education system in the United States. KIPP LA Prep shouldn’t be on the level of Harvard in terms of acceptance. Every child has as much right as the next to have a chance to receive a good education.