Education Documentaries: Too Much Drama

Documentaries about education are all the rage these days. A couple of weeks ago I was invited to join a panel of "experts" to discuss the documentary "A Race to Nowhere." In this film, the high-pressure life of modern adolescents was featured. There were interviews with teachers and students who said there is so much pressure to perform well in school, with the testing and the hours of homework, that actual learning and achievement have taken a back seat. Students are all being taught to do as they are told, and the creativity is being expunged from them as a result. There were also a few heartbreaking case studies of high-achieving adolescents who cracked under the pressure. One of the adolescents in the film committed suicide.

This documentary was shown in the gym of an expensive private school, and the room was packed with parents who seemed very anxious about what they had just seen on the screen. When it was my turn to comment on the film, I tried to relieve some of the tension and fear among the parents in the room. I began by saying that stress and suicide are very real and sad phenomena among teenagers, and that we should do what we can to alleviate them. But then I reminded the audience that most adolescents make it through school (and adolescence) just fine, and that suicide is a very rare event. Less than one percent of adolescents commit suicide. I also mentioned that, in my view, we were experiencing a very creative time in our society. Just think about all of the technological innovations we have seen in the last 10 years.

Although the film we all watched was a documentary, I reminded the audience, that does not mean that it is the WHOLE truth. The film did not include any well-adjusted students or teachers who felt like schools were not overly stressing students out. These teenagers and teachers exist, but the film makers were trying to make a point, so they were selective about who they included in the documentary. In other words, they were going for a dramatic effect.

The same is true for "Waiting for Superman," a new documentary about students and their families who try to escape underperforming schools by gaining entry to charter schools. Because there is more demand than there is supply in these charter schools, students and their families must sit through an agonizing lottery process to see whether they will be admitted into the charter schools. Again, these stories are heartbreaking.

But is the premise of this film--that school choice and charter schools will improve the educational opportunities of poor students--supported by evidence? Not yet. As Ross Douthat articulated in his excellent editorial (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/opinion/11douthat.html), there is not much evidence that school choice increases student achievement. Of course, some charter schools do raise achievement, and some do not. Some of the most successful charter school models, such as KIPP schools and the Harlem Children's Zone, require additional resources in terms of money, teacher commitment, and family commitment. These are all good things that should be encouraged, but to date there is little evidence that we have the will to allocate the resources that would be needed to scale up these successful models.

I'm generally sympathetic to the message in these two documentaries, I have to remind myself that these are movies with an agenda. The fact that they are non-fiction does not mean that they are the whole truth. They are only part of the story--the most dramatic part.