“We want parents to get more involved at looking at all the information behind the overall grade,” said Deputy Chancellor for Accountability Shael Suransky. He also said that this year’s reports for elementary and middle schools are the “most accurate” the city has ever produced.

As parents and principals figure out what to make of the new ratings, here are some highlights culled from the data:

• Because the DOE gave schools extra credit if they were especially successful with special education students and students who aren’t fluent in English, two schools scored over 100 points. Chancellor Klein visited one of the schools — P.S. 172 Beacon School in Sunset Park — as part of his back-to-school tour. The other school, P.S. 32 Belmont in the Bronx, received more extra credit points (15 in total) than any other school in the city. Last year, nearly 50 schools got more than 100 points.

• Eight schools got F’s this year. They are: P.S. 186 Walter Damrosch School (Bronx), P.S. 811 Mickey Mantle School (Manhattan), Frederick Douglass Academy IV Secondary School (Brooklyn), Community Roots Charter School (Brooklyn), Academy of Collaborative Education (Manhattan), P.S. 332 Charles Houston (Brooklyn), School for Environmental Citizenship (Bronx), Cornerstone Academy for Social Action (Bronx). The city tried to close P.S. 332 last year, but was blocked by a union lawsuit. Four of the F schools have never received progress reports before — two because they are new (Community Roots and Academy of Collaborative Education) and two because they are in District 75 (P.S. 186 and P.S. 811) — putting them at a major disadvantage. Had they gotten reports last year, their grades would have been as inflated as other schools’ grades were. They would have been able to take advantage of this year’s safety net, which prevented schools from dropping more than two letter grades.

• Twenty-two schools out of 1,140 saw their letter grades go up this year. Most of them — 12 in total — rose from a B to an A, five rose from a C to a B, two from a D to a C, and one from an F to a D. Two elementary schools stand out for jumping up multiple grades. Washington Heights Academy went from an F to a B this year and P.S. 28 Warren Prep Academy in Brooklyn went from a D to a B.

• The city’s teachers union runs a K-8 charter school in Brooklyn that, last year, was in the bottom five percent of schools citywide. That trend has repeated itself again this year, potentially putting the school’s future in jeopardy. Last year, the school got a B and this year its score fell to a D. Though its “environment” score, which measures factors likes parent happiness with the school, is a middling C, the school’s numerical environment score makes it the fourth lowest among charter schools.

United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew said the school has a new executive director, a new literacy program, and is creating small learning communities. The school is also trying to make teachers — particularly young teachers — feel that they’re part of a team that shares ideas. “We know exactly what the issues are. We’ll just keep moving forward,” Mulgrew said, adding that he does not believe the school’s authorizer will close it this year.

• P.S. 65 Mother Hale Academy in the Bronx, the only elementary school on the list of 23 schools New York City plans to “turnaround” with federal grant money, got a C on its progress report. It got an F for environment, a D for performance, and a B for progress.

• With 62 percent of its elementary and middle schools A-rated, District 26 in Queens had the highest percentage of A’s. District 2 in Manhattan had the highest percentage of B schools, at 52 percent, and district 18 in Brooklyn had the highest percentage of C schools at 58 percent. Brooklyn also had the highest percentage of D schools and the highest percentage of F schools belongs to District 75, which serves disabled students. The seven F-rated schools are spread out around the city, but none are in Queens.

• While 25 percent of district schools got A’s on their report cards, 20 percent of charter schools achieved this rating. This is not unlike last year, when 84 percent of district schools got A’s and 73 percent of charters got A’s.

Joseph Almeida, a sixth grade math teacher at KIPP Infinity, taught a lesson to adults at Rockefeller Center.

Among the mix of pages, chancellors, and mayors at NBC’s “Education Nation” outdoor museum at Rockefeller Center this week were a cadre of teachers from around the country who taught live “lessons” to the general public.

The exercise was remarkable for its lack of actual students. The lessons occurred inside one of several mini-tents on the plaza, starting at irregular hours, and the only officially invited guests were teachers, not children.

But the one teacher whose lesson I saw — Joseph Almeida, who teaches sixth grade math at KIPP Academy in the Bronx — did not let that deter him. He tailored his lesson, about place value, to the collection of adult tourists and passersby who gathered around him.

The principal training nonprofit New Leaders for New Schools gathered Almeida and the other roughly 50 teachers who taught public lessons through what New Leaders founder Jon Schnur described as a rigorous process. After recruiting nominations of teachers from around the country, New Leaders reviewed information ranging from the teachers’ students’ performance results to videotapes of their teaching.

The winning teachers presented their lessons live and got a free all-expenses paid trip to New York courtesy of NBC, Schnur told me.

In at least one case, a New Leaders staff person sent a last-minute e-mail message to a reporter (me) asking for recommendations of local high school teachers willing to teach at Rockefeller Center. The teacher I “nominated,” Eyal Wallenberg of the Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice in the Bronx, was selected and taught a lesson on the prisoner’s dilemma.

Adam Hyman, a technology teacher at P.S. 101 in Forest Hills, presented a sample lesson on a Promethean

NBC also showcased the work of teachers who have relationships with some of the Education Nation event’s sponsors. One of these, Adam Hyman, a technology teacher at P.S. 101 in Forest Hills who does contract work with Scholastic, presented a lesson on a digital interactive chalkboard made by the company Promethean.

I’m frustrated that my students’ focus and behavior seems to fall apart when they’re not with me. But most of all I was embarrassed by their behavior and embarrassed on their behalf. I didn’t mind letting them know. Although I don’t know how well third-graders truly understand the concept of feeling embarrassed …

Later, I finally finished grading my students’ math baselines, and the results were equally embarrassing. But this time I didn’t feel embarrassed for my students. Rather I was embarrassed for myself and for our educational system.

My students averaged just over 30 percent on the baseline. The highest score was a 72 percent, but 20 of my 28 students scored less than 50 percent. I was embarrassed first that I had placed so much confidence in my “high students.” It was sad to realize how much the bar for excellence can shift in a classroom filled with low-performing students. I was also embarrassed for a system that could let down so many children by letting them reach the third grade without necessary basic skills.*

Of course, that is the reason why the use of data is so hot right now. For all the complaints (including my own) about data crowding out the magic of the classroom, data also serve a valuable purpose. With data there are no excuses and there is no relativity. Data strips me of my delusions and allows me to see my students’ true strengths and needs. Data also lays the failings of our system bare. Now that I’ve had an embarrassing (yet healthy) dose of reality, I have a true sense of the work that needs to be done.

*In fairness to “the system,” close to half of my students have been in the country for two years or less.

Of the city’s 1,140 elementary and middle schools, 35 percent (396 schools) received B’s, 35 (398 schools) got C’s, 4 percent (49 schools) got D’s and 1 percent (8 schools) got F’s. More schools scored low enough to get failing grades, but their final marks were buoyed by city officials’ decision to limit the amount by which a school’s grade could fall this year.

About 70 percent of schools saw their grades drop this year. Roughly 400 had their grades fall by one letter and about 340 dropped by two letter grades. Only 22 schools went up at least one letter grade.

Last year, students’ inflated scores on the state exams led 84 percent of schools to get A’s, 13 percent to get B’s, and two percent got C’s. Only two schools got F’s.

This year, as a result of the city’s limit on how far scores could fall, schools that got A’s in 2009 could not receive a grade lower than a C. A “B” school last year couldn’t be worse than a “D” this year.

The safety net may confuse parents hoping to use the grades to help them choose were to send their children. On a list of the city’s lowest-scoring schools, only two received F grades and the majority were awarded C’s, raising questions about what it means to be a “C” school this year.

For a handful of schools, the safety net was a saving grace. These schools’ scores in the three assessed categories — performance, environment, and progress — were so low that they would have earned D’s or F’s under normal conditions and could have motivated the city to close them. But because these schools got A’s on their progress reports last year, they couldn’t score lower than a C.

Ross Global Academy is one of these schools. The charter school, which opened in 2006, got an F in all three categories and the lowest overall score of all 1,140 schools. Its final grade this year is a C because in 2009, it was awarded an A.

Schools can face leadership changes or closure if they receive grades of D or F, or if they receive C’s three years running. A Department of Education spokesman said that the city would not change its criteria this year. Schools that would have received D’s or F’s, but whose grades were boosted to C’s, will only be considered for phase-out if they continue to receive low grades in future years.

15 Schools with Lowest Overall Scores

1.     Ross Global Academy Charter School: 0.1, overall grade C
2.     Brooklyn Collegiate: 4.4, overall grade D
3.     P.S. 118 Lorraine Hansberry: 5.1, overall grade C
4.     P.S. 55 Henry Boehm: 5.7, overall grade C
5.     P.S. 107: 6.3 overall grade D
6.     Cornerstone Academy for Social Action: 7.6, overall grade F
7.     Urban Assembly Academy for Civic Engagement: 7.9, overall grade C
8.     School for Environmental Citizenship (K-3): 8.5, overall grade F
9.     P.S. 115 Alexander Humboldt: 9.3, overall grade C
10.  School of Diplomacy: 10.1, overall grade C
11.  Harlem Day Charter School: 10.2, overall grade C
12.  P.S. 193 Alfred Kennedy: 10.9, overall grade C
13.  Institute for Collaborative Education: 11.0, overall grade C
14.  Mott Hall IV: 11.1, overall grade C
15.  Sisulu-Walker Charter School: 11.2, overall grade C

Schools such as PS 333 (The Manhattan School for Children) want to change that by starting composting programs to teach their students that food waste does not have to end up in a landfill. Instead, the schools are teaching, food waste can be used to create rich black soil that will nourish plants students can eat in the future. Students learn the invaluable lesson of decay, regrowth, and the cycles of life.

The voluntary composting program the Manhattan School for Children is initiating could one day be mandatory, not just for our schools but our entire city. That’s because composting is an environmentally superior alternative to landfilling organics that eliminates methane production and substantially reduces greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, ton for ton, composting reduces greenhouse gas emissions from organics management over any other management option. Citywide composting is already in place in cities like Seattle and Berkeley, Calif.

The Manhattan School for Children, a K-8 school with both a Wellness Committee and a Green Team, has made sustainability issues a top priority. This fall the school will be completing an ambitious greenhouse project with a scheduled opening for Nov. 5. The greenhouse will serve as a science-based learning lab and will play a key role in the school’s composting program, which came about in large part to two of the school’s parents, Manuela Zamora and Sidsel Robards.

We spoke with Melanie Sherman, a parent at the school and nutritionist who has helped to spearhead many of PS 333′s “green” initiatives. She explained to us that the school has composting bins in every classroom, where the students compost paper, fruit, vegetables, egg shells, tea leaves and coffee grinds. Their compost bins are homemade using wriggler worms and paper.

Melanie told us:

You can buy finished bins at the Lower East Side Ecology Center for $55 each. We chose to build our own and ended up spending less —  about $15 for a large plastic bin. The custodians at the school helped drill holes along the top of the bins for air vents. Each bin needs a pound of worms, which are around $22 per pound. We bought worms from several places — the ones from The Lower East Side Ecology Center were great.

The Lower East Side Ecology Center played an important role in helping PS 333 set up its composting system. The center conducted a workshop with the teachers where they handed out informational flyers as well as offered an emergency hotline for anyone with questions. There were also books that the teachers and parents used to educate themselves and the students. The most popular were “Worms Eat Our Garbage: Classroom Activities for a Better Environment” and “Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Set Up and Maintain a Worm Composting System.” A parent at the school got a grant from Lowe’s that covered the costs of the bins and worms as part of the Greenhouse Project.

The school’s Green Team also recruited older kids as “ambassadors” to teach the younger students the values and “how to’s” of composting. Involving older students as educators is an excellent way of letting the students know that the composting system is their accomplishment — and their responsibility to feed and maintain.

Melanie did admit to us that one classroom had “a big problem” with fruit flies, but she assured us that fruit flies can be avoided by microwaving the fruit waste before adding it to the bin (a great tip). Even so, some classrooms chose not to put fruit in their bins.  Fruit or no fruit, the compost collected from the classes will go to the school’s newly constructed greenhouse as well as to the local greenmarket.

When we asked Melanie what advice she had for parents wanting to start a composting system at their school, we couldn’t help but notice her own childlike enthusiasm:

Keep at it — it is definitely a learning curve both for the teachers and kids, but I think it is a great teaching tool. We have several families who now compost in their NYC apartments. One pound of worms in a bin can eat up to 3 pounds of waste in a week — if you are going out of town, you can throw in an apple and the New York Times and they will be fine for a week.

The Manhattan School for Children plans to launch a website later this year with ideas and events for people interested in composting. The school’s goal is to become a model school for a “Green, Clean, Sustainable and Healthy” environment for New York City’s children. We look forward to keeping you posted on their future accomplishments.

Last year, when 97 percent of elementary and middle schools received an A or B on their progress reports, Department of Education officials held a press conference with Chancellor Joel Klein to announce the results. The same was done in 2008. This year, just as the city has changed its formula for assigning the grades and tougher state tests mean more schools will receive a D or F grade than last year or the year before, the DOE is downplaying the release.

There will be no press conference tomorrow. The chancellor, who in years past has taken questions from reporters in public, will spend the day in Washington D.C, according to a DOE spokesman. Instead, reporters have to request a phone interview with DOE Deputy Chancellor for Accountability Shael Suransky and Klein may be made available for some reporters’ calls late tomorrow afternoon.

“The reasoning is that apart from the data itself, the grades schools receive, and which ones receive the grades, there’s no news here,” said DOE spokesman Matt Mittenthal.

Mittenthal said the city would hold a press conference in November when it releases high schools’ report cards. The city has not announced any plans to make changes to the formula that determines high school grades.

For the first time, the city is releasing progress reports for K-2 schools and District 75 schools, which serve high-needs special education students. It is also radically changing the way it doles out grades by switching to a formula that compares similar students’ progress rather than the percentage of students that are proficient.

Out of concern that the newly toughened tests and the increase in failing students would cause schools’ grades to plummet, the city has placed limits on how far schools’ grades can fall. Still, some principals are having a difficult time adjusting to the new scores.

“Some Principals are overwhelmed and frustrated with this latest round of Progress Reports,” said principals union spokesman Antoinette Isable. “This frustration has a lot do to do with the state benchmarks being raised.”

The city’s press office has also decided to forgo the tradition of giving reporters the embargoed grades the night before the official release. This year, the press will have less time to review the information-heavy documents.

The city is trying to accomplish several goals at once: It is hoping to improve the methods it uses to measure student progress and reduce the wild fluctuation and inflation of grades that has marked past years’ progress reports. At the same time, city officials hope to convince parents, teachers and principals that the grades are meaningful, especially in light of this year’s sharp drop in test scores across the city.

Last year, the city gave 84 percent of elementary and middle schools A’s, while 13 percent received a B, and 2 percent received a C. Just five schools were given D’s, and two were given F’s. Those grades were much higher than the year before, when 38 percent of schools were given an A. In 2007, when the reports were first issued, 23 percent received that rating.

For this year’s progress reports, the city is making several big changes to how the grades are calculated. First, it is modifying how the city calculates students’ progress. In the past, a significant percentage of a school’s grade  — 85 percent for elementary and middle schools — was based on student performance on state math and reading scores. So when test scores went up throughout the city in 2009 (reflecting a statewide trend), the grades soared on progress reports.

This year the city is doing something different. It is comparing the progress of each student to other students who began the school year performing at the same level.

In other words, students who scored a level 3 on the math exam in 2009 will have their 2010 math scores judged against other students who scored similarly the year before. If one student ends the year with a higher score than another student who started at the same place, the first student’s school will receive more credit.

“It’s still kid to kid, but kid to kids who started at the same place,” Shael Polakow-Suransky, the city’s deputy chancellor for accountability, told WNYC’s Beth Fertig. “It’s a much more precise measure.”

The new formula is based on Colorado’s “growth model” for measuring student progress.

In addition, the city is distributing progress report grades across a curve for the first time. Only a quarter of schools will be granted A’s, and roughly two-thirds will receive either a B or C.

Knowing that state education officials planned to make the tests more difficult to pass, the city announced the curve in January. But when the drop in test scores was more severe than the city had anticipated, officials decided to add a floor to how far schools’ progress report grades can fall.

Under this year’s curve, 15 percent of schools are slated to receive the lowest two grades. High stakes are attached to the progress report grades. Grades of D or F, as well as a string of three C’s in a row, trigger scrutiny from the city, which can frequently lead to a school being restructured or closed.

Critics of the school accountability system who charge that the reports rely too heavily on the state exams are not likely to be assuaged by the changes. Students’ scores on the standardized tests still account for 85 percent of a school’s total grade. The rest is determined by reviews of the school environment and the results of surveys given to students, parents and teachers.

Some principals also remain wary of how their students’ progress is compared to that of students at other schools. The city has historically assigned schools “peer groups” for the purpose of comparison, and some principals have complained that those groups of schools are not as similar as the city says.

The city is also making a number of smaller changes to this year’s progress report grading. For middle schools, a pilot program will factor students’ class grades into schools’ progress reports, as the city does for high school report cards.

And schools will be given more credit this year for closing the performance gap between their general education students, their special education students, and those learning English. Also for the first time this year, schools in the city’s District 75 program, which serves the most severely disabled students, will also receive progress reports.

High schools are expected to receive their progress reports in November. The city is not changing how high school grades will be calculated this year.

Our amazing jobs board launched today. Peruse, post, and then send us feedback.

After encouragement from many readers (maybe you were one), we have launched a jobs board.

We hope this will be a great place to target job postings to the most intelligent, capable education workers in America — okay, at least New York City. And I won’t lie: We also hope that the jobs board can eventually help us pay the bills.

Right now you can post a job for $0 — as long as you grab one of the first 40 slots. (We did an early announcement on Twitter, so 10 of these slots are already taken.)

Also, big props to our industrious web developer Chris Abraham, who managed this project. Chris asks that you keep us all honest by reporting all feedback. What features do you want more of? What isn’t working? Send feedback to tips.

Before I let the parents go, I tried to emphasize something more important than all the little ways they could help at home. I tried to add one last message, in my stilted Spanish: “Yo quiero los ninos a aprender como… encantar… aprendiendo.” I want the kids to learn how to love learning.

This is the essential challenge of my teaching this year. It has always been a focus of my teaching, but it feels especially urgent this year. Perhaps it’s tied to the rocky start I’ve had to the school year. As I’ve struggled through several lessons with an especially talkative and inattentive group of students, I can tell that nobody’s enjoying themselves. The best parts of my day have been when a mess of students are struggling to control themselves and can’t wait to share their ideas. It can be frustrating when students forget to raise their hand, but it’s also a sign that they’re excited. It’s this excitement about learning I want to cultivate in every subject, every day.

But I also feel a sense of urgency because lately I don’t hear anyone talking about this. From the highest levels down to the discussions I’ve been a part of, this topic seems absent from so many conversations about education reform and student achievement. You will hear words like data, performance standards and intervention to no end, but rarely will you hear anyone ask, “Do our students love to learn?”.

Ultimately, it’s important to me, because I know it’s the only way my students will have a chance to succeed. I may not get all my students to grade level within the next nine months, but if I can implant them with a drive and desire to learn, then they will find a way to catch up. Conversely, if I somehow got all my students to grade level, but crushed the love of learning out of them in the process, as soon as they left my classroom their development would end.

I understand completely the importance of data and other trendier concepts to the 21st-century classroom, and I use them fully. But we cannot create the next generation of innovators, inventors, or entrepreneurs anywhere, let alone the poorest neighborhoods, without creating a sustainable thirst for knowledge within our students. Love of learning and “college and career readiness” are not mutually exclusive, but rather are deeply intertwined. I wonder about ways to achieve this synergy, whether through more engaging instruction or more field trips. And as I think about my own commitment to simultaneously helping my students to learn and helping them to love learning, I wonder why we don’t hear more voices acknowledging that both are vital to our children’s education.

Maria had come late the first three days, and the fourth morning I called her mom.  Mom said she and Maria had discussed it, and that Maria has always moved a tad slowly. Maria had tried, but just couldn’t make it. I told Mom Maria was a joy when she showed up, but that I couldn’t allow one kid to come late while everyone else came on time. Mom was very reasonable and understanding, and we ended the conversation hopeful of an acceptable solution. The fact that Maria came from room 306, all the way up there on the opposite side of the building made this a challenge. I didn’t want to read Maria the riot act again. For starters, she knew very little English, and likely didn’t much understand it.

I got off the phone, grabbed my bag, and moved straight to room 306, Maria’s science class. When the bell rang, I walked in to find Maria leisurely placing things in her bag.

“Come on, Maria!” I said, gesticulating with all the urgency I could muster. “We have to make it to the trailers before the bell rings!” She was appropriately shocked, and began to move accordingly.

We made a mad dash to the front stairwell, rushed down two flights of stairs, and crossed the strip without incident. By the time we got to the back door I was a little out of breath, but so was Maria. (Perhaps I wasn’t as out of shape as I’d thought.) We rushed to the trailer, where a dozen kids were milling about, waiting for me to unlock the door.   I did, and Maria was the first one in. So despite what Maria had told herself, her parents, and me, it can be done. In fact, we’d scientifically proven it.

But Maria’s usually punctual friend Sylvia was missing. And when she showed up eleven minutes late I was sorely disappointed. “Oh, Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia,” I began, launching into some horrendous soon-to-be improvised lecture. But Sylvia said something about the number 25 bus, and looked so genuinely miserable and contrite I began to feel as though her lateness were somehow my fault.

Then Maria said something. I don’t know what. But Maria and Sylvia speak Spanish, I can speak Spanish, and for some inexplicable reason I turned and blurted out, “¿Perdón?”

This was a huge error, as I’ve trained my class to never, ever speak anything but English in the classroom. My kids are near-beginners in English, and eliminating other options is the only way to drag English from them. How could I, an ostensible role model, break my own cardinal rule?

I’d been teaching them things like, “My name is Maria,” “I’m from Colombia,” and “This is a chair.” But after my unfortunate utterance they stunned me, rattling off all the things I’d repeatedly told them when they slipped into their native languages.

“Oh, Mr., how could you?” asked Hye Min.

“Unbelievable!” said Hao.

“After all my hard work, all my years of sacrifice…”

“What do I ask?  Just a little bit of English.  But NOOOOO!”

“Inconceivable!” proclaimed Maria.

“You almost broke my heart!” said Sylvia, pointing an accusing finger (but happy to have it pointing away from her).

I’m not entirely sure these are the things you want beginning English speakers to know.  But my kids are now experts.

A group of city public school parents blasted NBC today for its week-long special programming on education, saying that the network has kept parents and skeptics of education reform off the air.

The network is running a series of televised interviews and panel discussions it is calling “Education Nation” all this week. Parents gathered today outside of the “Learning Plaza” the network has built at Rockefeller Center to complain about the series’ line-up of speakers, which is dominated by politicians, officials and philanthropists.

“Parents are offended about the way in which NBC has refused to invite a single NYC public school parent onto any of their panels,” said Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters. “Instead, the network has allowed wealthy billionaires once again to control the agenda.”

The group also criticized NBC for allowing Mayor Bloomberg to deliver a policy speech televised on the network Monday morning without taking questions from reporters.

“Waiting for ‘Superman’” director Davis Guggenheim has repeatedly denounced criticisms that his film stakes a ground that is pro-charter school and critical of the teachers union. But a lobbying group with exactly that agenda is using the documentary to spread its message to the general public.

The campaign, called “Done Waiting,” represents one winner in the ongoing debate inside the education world about how to transform the attention the film into a coherent “call to action” for agitated movie-goers.

The answer put forward by Education Reform Now, the group leading the “Done Waiting” campaign, is to use the film as a springboard for making specific political changes.

The group’s favored changes include expanding charter schools and changing the way teachers are evaluated and granted tenure. Paid canvassers waiting outside movie theaters across the country hand movie-goers literature, direct them to a campaign-style web site, DoneWaiting.org, and encourage them to add their e-mail addresses to the group’s mailing list.

(Education Reform Now was also the group behind the massive public relations campaign that preceded New York’s charter cap lift in May, and the advocacy component to the political action committee Democrats for Education Reform.)

The campaign has not been endorsed by the film’s movie studio and production company, Paramount Pictures and Participant Media, which is running its own, less explicitly political outreach campaign around the film.

While Done Waiting canvassers handed out stylized, well-designed fliers when I saw the film on Sunday, Paramount and Participant Media had printed glossy fliers and had them stacked on a table inside the movie theater. The fliers and Paramount’s web site, WaitingForSuperman.com, suggest that people take action by volunteering at a school, mentoring a student, or making a donation to a teacher via the website DonorsChoose.

But to a casual observer, the Done Waiting canvassers, who are being paid a starting wage of 10 dollars per hour, could easily be mistaken as affiliated with the film. When I saw the film, canvassers greeted those exiting the theater onto Houston Street with palm cards and requests for their contact information, which many people I saw seemed happy to give them. The canvasser I spoke to was vague about who was behind the campaign, referring me to its website.

A spokesman for Participant, Jeff Sakson, said that while the production company was aware of Done Waiting’s activity, such political organizing is not part of Participant’s mission.

“Waiting for ‘Superman,’” which had the fourth-best opening of any specialty film last weekend, has already sparked a national conversation about education reform. Oprah aired two shows based around the film, President Barack Obama called it “powerful,” and a week of education programming on NBC has frequently mentioned the film.

The Done Waiting canvassers have often not been the only ones waiting outside the theater, hoping to grab the attention of  the “Waiting for ‘Superman’” audience. Two groups of teachers and parents, upset at the film’s portrayal of teachers unions as impediments to change, staged loud protests at screenings of the film over the weekend.

What “Superman” Gets Right

• The film asks the right questions, and it gets two key answers correct: great teachers are what makes a difference, and all students can learn regardless of their background. If I had to pick a litmus test for new teachers, these two beliefs would be it.
• The most pleasant surprise in the film was it’s critique of so-called “good” suburban schools. “Superman” correctly points out that these schools only look good because of the top 25 percent of students who are tracked into honors and AP courses. Many, if not most, suburban schools are not adding any value to the students they serve, but merely passing them along on the path they were already on. I will write a full post soon talking about my experiences in these schools.
• It points out that only 1 in 5 charter schools gets great results.
• It gives an excellent analysis of how schools are setup to do the job they were designed to do 50 years ago, when only 20% of the population went to college, and only 40 percent went into skilled jobs. It is correct that we need to redesign schools for the 21st century.

What Superman Gets Wrong Because of Myopic Ignorance

• The single worst part of the film is unfortunately its only real depiction of what teaching actually is. In a cutely animated piece that begins with a voice-over saying, “Teaching should be simple,’” we see a teacher literally popping open the heads of her students and pouring an alphabet soup of knowledge into their brains. At best, this is a problematic depiction of what teachers do. At worst, this is a depiction of bad teaching — what Paulo Friere famously called the “banking” model of education — and is exactly the problem with many teachers. Most people in the public do not understand the complexity of what teachers do in their classrooms and how modern research has disproven this notion of education, and the film unfortunately just reinforced misconceptions.
• Similarly, the movie says that the difference between good and bad teachers is that good teachers will cover 150 percent of the curriculum, and bad teacher will only cover 50 percent. My education professor at Brown University, Bil Johnson, referred to coverage as the “disease model of education,” where we expose students to the curriculum and hope they catch it. What this piece of data actually communicated was the difference in student learning, not the difference in what teachers did. Student learning is what matters, not what teachers “cover.”
• It reinforces the “good ol’ days” myth that things were fine in education up until the 1970s. That’s not true on two levels. First, there has been a “crisis” in public education in America roughly once a decade for 100 years. And what changed in the 1970′s wasn’t schools, but rather the civil rights movement forced America to pay attention to all its children for the first time.
• The film says absolutely nothing about the problems of rural schools, which are very different from those of urban schools.

What Is Clearly Manipulative Propaganda

• The film is intentionally misleading on tenure. Tenure does not, as the film claims, guarantee a job for life. Tenure is simply a guarantee of due process. Also, at least in New York, tenure is not in the teaching contract, but is state law that can be changed at any time without the permission of the teacher’s union.
• The film gives a one-sided, demonizing view of teachers unions. The director has publicly denied an anti-union agenda, but this article from The Nation does a far better job dealing with that issue than I ever could.
• It claims that 25 years ago we didn’t know what worked in urban schools, and that people like a Michelle Rhee, Geoffrey Canada, and the founders of KIPP have figured it out. The film is wrong. Schools founded by educators such as Ted Sizer, Deborah Meier, and Dennis Litsky over the past 30 years have successfully educated urban students using very different pedagogy from KIPP schools and their imitators. Progressive city schools like East Side Community School, Vanguard, and The Urban Academy have been successfully educating high-need urban students for a long time, but without the resources and public attention of the new charter schools.
• The movie claims that great teachers make a difference. But not a single teacher is interviewed, and only very brief moments of good teachers’ classrooms are shown.
• The movie says nothing about the fact that most charter schools have more resources, fewer students with severe special education needs, fewer English language learners, and that they can kick students out, unlike public schools.
• Most significantly, it uses five children to make an implicit argument that the only hope for urban children of color or suburban children who test poorly is to get into a charter school. It sets up a situation where the climax of the film is the school lottery that will determine whether the students have a future. This is horribly wrong on two accounts. First, even the so-called “dropout factories” still do graduate a portion of their students, and these students are the ones who are motivated and have parental support at home, students just like the ones in the film whose parents take the time to research and enter charter school lotteries. I would bet a lot of money that all the children featured in the film are going to do just fine with a public school education. But more importantly, the film refuses to show good, urban public schools like the one I teach in that are being successful with more challenging populations than most charter schools. For someone who doesn’t know any better, and I’m beginning to fear this group most importantly includes the young teachers in charter schools, the only logical conclusions to make from the film is that only charter schools can educate poor urban children. The film could have made its core points with two students on the path to a successful traditional public school, but chose not to in what can only be interpreted as an attack on all traditional public schools, even those of us who are outperforming the vast majority of charters.