NOBODY saw this movie and it was yanked from theatres after the first week. Some theatres didnt even OFFER this right wing exaggeration P.O.C.
Quotes:
"The film dismisses with a side comment the inconvenient truth that our schools are criminally underfunded. Money's not the answer, it glibly declares. Nor does it suggest that students would have better outcomes if their communities had jobs, health care, decent housing, and a living wage. Particularly dishonest is the fact that Guggenheim never mentions the tens of millions of dollars of private money that has poured into the
Harlem Children's Zone, the model and superman we are relentlessly instructed to aspire to."
— Rick Ayers, Adjunct Professor in Education at the
University of San Francisco[22]
Author and academic Rick Ayers lambasted the accuracy of the film, describing it as "a slick marketing piece full of half-truths and distortions."
[22] In Ayers' view, the "corporate powerhouses and the ideological opponents of all things public" have employed the film to "break the teacher's unions and to privatize education", while driving teachers' wages even lower and running "schools like little
corporations."
[22] The film does, however, note that since 1971, inflation-adjusted per-student spending has more than doubled, "from $4,300 to more than $9,000 per student," but that over the same period, test scores have "flatlined." Ayers also critiqued the film's promotion of a greater focus on "top-down instruction driven by test scores", positing that extensive research has demonstrated that
standardized testing "dumbs down the curriculum" and "reproduces inequities", while marginalizing "English language learners and those who do not grow up speaking a
middle class vernacular."
[22] Lastly, Ayers contends that "schools are more segregated today than before
Brown v. Board of Education in 1954", and thus criticized the film for not mentioning that in his view, "black and brown students are being suspended, expelled, searched, and criminalized."
[22]
Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education at
New York University and a nonresident senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution, similarly criticizes the accuracy of the film.
[23] Ravitch notes that a study by
Stanford University economist Margaret Raymond of 5000 charter schools found that only 17% are superior in math test performance to a matched public school, casting doubt on the film's claim that privately managed charter schools are the solution to bad public schools.
[23] The film does note however that most charter schools do not outperform and that it focuses on those that do. As well, the film explicitly stated that 1 in 5 charter schools (close to the 17% statistic previously stated) were the overreaching, superior charter schools. Ravitch writes that many charter schools also perform badly, are involved in "unsavory real estate deals" and expel low-performing students before testing days to ensure high test scores.
[23] The most substantial distortion in the film, according to Ravitch, is the film's claim that "70 percent of eighth-grade students cannot read at grade level", a misrepresentation of data from the
National Assessment of Educational Progress.
[23] Ravitch served as a board member with the NAEP and notes that "the NAEP doesn't measure performance in terms of grade-level achievement", as claimed in the film, but only as "advanced", "proficient", and "basic". The film assumes that any student below proficient is "below grade level", but this claim is not supported by the NAEP data.
**The movie was intended on being the lead dog in the fight against unions in this country. The republicans over a year ago decided to attack unions in every state as a way to win back the white house in 2012. Little by little, they have used FOX news as the mouthpiece for attacking unions everywhere, everyday. After the Nov midterms, they used their new elected powers to place the attacks on unions in effect. **
This movie BOMBED in the theatres as most right wing movies do.
Peace.