2010 Sundance Film Festival

America’s schools are failing. Despite all the presidents who have committed themselves to education reform and the millions that have been poured into America’s pubic schools, there has been little improvement for nearly 40 years. American student’s reading and math skills continue to drop and large teacher unions have made it nearly impossible to fire bad teachers. Waiting for Superman delivers a probing and informative look into the American public school system and why it continues to fail, despite all of our reform efforts. To give the statistics a face, Guggenheim follows the lives of five school children, the struggles their families have faced in the “drop out factories” and “academic sinkholes” they currently attend and their immense hope that they can be one of the lucky few to make it into a charter school. These touching interviews with the families are enhanced by a plethora jaw-dropping facts and interviews with education reformers. Ultimately, Guggenheim’s message isn’t one of doom and gloom though. Good teachers create good schools, and according to Guggenheim if we can cut through all the red tape created by teachers unions, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel for America’s school children. –Jeanette D. Moses http://www.slugmag.com/festivals.php?sid=596