The Truth Regarding The Corrupt Public Schools
Posted on October 31st, 2010 by Steven Reynolds
There’s money to be made in education, argues Bob Bowdon, but entirely if you snip out the unprofitable bits, like skillful teachers. In his documentary “The Cartel,” Bowdon, a New Jersey television news newsman, turns the camera upon the massive corruption and misdirection that has led his state to expend more than any other on its students just with shoddy results. It’s not toilsome for Bowdon to illustrate that something’s awfully wrong with a state that pays $17,000 per student but can only manage a 39% reading proficiency rate — that there’s a crisis is undeniable, how to deal with it is different question entirely.
Present are two major factions in Bowdon’s picture — the villains are reasonably clearly the Jersey teachers union and school board who funnel 90 cents of every dollar away from teachers’ salaries and towards incidentals, including six-figure salaries for school administrators. The other cabal is the supporters of charter schools, the private schools that can evade the control of the public school system and would serve inner-city kids if their taxpayer money could be more cautiously used. In those impoverished public schools, Bowdon points out, it’s pretty much unimaginable to fire an instructor — so even a deficient one has a job for life.
“‘The Cartel’ examines lots of diverse aspects of public teaching, tenure, backing, support drops, corruption –meaning thievery — vouchers and charter schools,” says Bowdon. “The title education documentary possibly could sound to some like dry squared, but in fact the picture itself betrays an fiery passion for the quandary of particularly inner-city children.”
“The Cartel” first appeared on the festival circuit in summer 2009, appearing in theaters nationally a year later. The film has started a lot of talk, which must no doubt persist with the more-recent release of “An Inconvenient Truth” director Davis Guggenheim’s own education expose, “Waiting for Superman.” Bowdon sees the films as complementary, and hopes that “Superman,” with its human-interest stance, draws more curiosity to his own, which focuses on public policy. “My picture is the left-brained edition, more analytical,” Bowdon says, “‘Waiting for Superman’ is more the right-brained treatment.”
It is positively analytical, couching its arguments in an assessment of how the money is being spent, or misspent. He follows the money to represent conclusions around how dirty the Jersey school system is, but his film features moments of elevated emotion and broken heartedness. A girl’s tears upon hearing that she wasn’t selected to attend a charter school, that she’s stuck in her public school, illustrate the failure of a system as well as Bowdon’s charts and interviews.
And whilst there’s a satire in this variety of public corruption happening in a state renowned for its organized crime, it’s evident that this is not an isolated collapse. Bowdon’s film illustrates a local problem, but any viewer will acknowledge the systems of system failure in their own state’s schools. The one he seems to be most behind is the charter schools, which take the reins from the unions and give them back to the taxpayer. But he also knows it’ll be an uphill conflict to recover control from those who’ve worked so intense to make education very profitable for the very few.
Read more truth, go to Truth-It.net.