The education method in America is working well, says Bob Bowdon, although simply for some -- and those few definitely aren't the students. In his education docudrama "The Cartel," Bowdon, a TV news reporter in New Jersey, paints a potent ugly scene of the institutional corruption that has resulted in more or less incredible wastes of taxpayer money. The numbers recite the tale: $17,000 exhausted per pupil, and at hand's only a 39% reading proficiency rate, it's tough to reason that there's a crisis underway, but harder to agree on a resolution.
The two sides of this conflict meet head-on in interviews throughout Bowdon's picture: there are the teachers union and school board members who have managed to apportion 90 cents of every taxpayer dollar into everything but teachers' salaries -- while a quantity of school administrators earn upwards of $100,000. On the other side are the supporters of a charter school system, private schools in which parents can use tax vouchers to pay tuition and leave behind the public nightmare. One of Bowdon's principal criticisms is that a teacher, even a shoddy one, fundamentally can't be fired -- which provides zero reason to do much actual teaching.
"'The Cartel' examines lots of uncommon aspects of public teaching, tenure, financing, support drops, corruption --meaning larceny -- vouchers and charter schools," says Bowdon. "And as such it kind of serves as a quick-moving primer on all of the heavy topics amongst the education-reform movement."
"The Cartel" started fashioning the round of the festivals in summer 2009, and made its theatrical debut virtually a year later, in spring 2010. It consequently proceeds the more-recently released, though higher profile, education docudrama "Waiting for Superman," directed by Davis Guggenheim ("An Inconvenient Truth"). Bowdon sees the two documentaries as taking alternative approaches to the similar quandary, "The Cartel" by examining public policy and "Superman" centering on the human-interest aspects. "My picture is the left-brained variation, more analytical," Bowdon says, "'Waiting for Superman' is more the right-brained treatment."
The left-brained method means arguments that follow the economics -- money misspent, opportunities wasted. Although he calls it left-brained, still "The Cartel" reaches some heartbreaking moments of emotion. The weeping face of a youthful girl who learns she was not selected for a place at a charter school makes its own intense debate for the unsatisfactory failure of a state's education system.
And whilst it may be straightforward to acknowledge the presence of corruption in a state so associated with organized crime, the uncomfortable fact of the matter is that this is a highly familiar situation. Bowdon's film illustrates a local crisis, but any viewer will recognize the systems of system failure in their own state's schools. Bowdon puts his faith in the charter schools, where the taxpayer has influence over the kind and quality of education. But he also makes it unambiguous that those in power are going to be unwilling to give it up without a fight. - 40732
The two sides of this conflict meet head-on in interviews throughout Bowdon's picture: there are the teachers union and school board members who have managed to apportion 90 cents of every taxpayer dollar into everything but teachers' salaries -- while a quantity of school administrators earn upwards of $100,000. On the other side are the supporters of a charter school system, private schools in which parents can use tax vouchers to pay tuition and leave behind the public nightmare. One of Bowdon's principal criticisms is that a teacher, even a shoddy one, fundamentally can't be fired -- which provides zero reason to do much actual teaching.
"'The Cartel' examines lots of uncommon aspects of public teaching, tenure, financing, support drops, corruption --meaning larceny -- vouchers and charter schools," says Bowdon. "And as such it kind of serves as a quick-moving primer on all of the heavy topics amongst the education-reform movement."
"The Cartel" started fashioning the round of the festivals in summer 2009, and made its theatrical debut virtually a year later, in spring 2010. It consequently proceeds the more-recently released, though higher profile, education docudrama "Waiting for Superman," directed by Davis Guggenheim ("An Inconvenient Truth"). Bowdon sees the two documentaries as taking alternative approaches to the similar quandary, "The Cartel" by examining public policy and "Superman" centering on the human-interest aspects. "My picture is the left-brained variation, more analytical," Bowdon says, "'Waiting for Superman' is more the right-brained treatment."
The left-brained method means arguments that follow the economics -- money misspent, opportunities wasted. Although he calls it left-brained, still "The Cartel" reaches some heartbreaking moments of emotion. The weeping face of a youthful girl who learns she was not selected for a place at a charter school makes its own intense debate for the unsatisfactory failure of a state's education system.
And whilst it may be straightforward to acknowledge the presence of corruption in a state so associated with organized crime, the uncomfortable fact of the matter is that this is a highly familiar situation. Bowdon's film illustrates a local crisis, but any viewer will recognize the systems of system failure in their own state's schools. Bowdon puts his faith in the charter schools, where the taxpayer has influence over the kind and quality of education. But he also makes it unambiguous that those in power are going to be unwilling to give it up without a fight. - 40732
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