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 diverse aspects of public education, tenure, funding, support drops, subversion --meaning theft -- vouchers and charter schools," says Bowdon. "And as such it sort of serves as a rapid-moving primer on all of the blistering topics within the education-reform front."
"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."
And Bowdon's picture is relentlessly acute, making a intense case for the feeling that the sum of money spent is nowhere near as pertinent as how it is spent. While he calls it left-brained, still "The Cartel" reaches some disheartening moments of emotion. The tearful face of an adolescent girl who learns she was not selected for a spot at a charter school makes its own deep controversy for the unsatisfactory failure of a state's education system.
It's difficult to watch a movie about corruption in Jersey and not think of the mob, but it's also evident that this is a national predicament seen through a tight lens. Any watcher will recognize the failings of their own state's education system and the battle for control. Bowdon comes out in favor of the charter school plan, of taxpayers being able to choose their own schools, to get out from under the state's control. However he also knows it'll be an upward struggle to retrieve control from those who've worked so hard to make education very profitable for the very few. - 40724
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 diverse aspects of public education, tenure, funding, support drops, subversion --meaning theft -- vouchers and charter schools," says Bowdon. "And as such it sort of serves as a rapid-moving primer on all of the blistering topics within the education-reform front."
"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."
And Bowdon's picture is relentlessly acute, making a intense case for the feeling that the sum of money spent is nowhere near as pertinent as how it is spent. While he calls it left-brained, still "The Cartel" reaches some disheartening moments of emotion. The tearful face of an adolescent girl who learns she was not selected for a spot at a charter school makes its own deep controversy for the unsatisfactory failure of a state's education system.
It's difficult to watch a movie about corruption in Jersey and not think of the mob, but it's also evident that this is a national predicament seen through a tight lens. Any watcher will recognize the failings of their own state's education system and the battle for control. Bowdon comes out in favor of the charter school plan, of taxpayers being able to choose their own schools, to get out from under the state's control. However he also knows it'll be an upward struggle to retrieve control from those who've worked so hard to make education very profitable for the very few. - 40724
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