The school system may be made to be a great deal profitable, says Bob Bowdon, however entirely at the expense of things comparable to teachers and students. In his documentary "The Cartel," Bowdon, a New Jersey television news newsperson, turns the camera on the massive degeneracy and misdirection that has led his state to squander more than any other on its students just with substandard results. The numbers express the tale: $17,000 exhausted per student, and there's simply a 39% reading proficiency rate, it's tough to argue that there's a crisis afoot, but harder to concur on a solution.
On the one side is the monumental Jersey teachers union and shady school officials, who make certain that, as Bowdon points out in his picture, 90 cents of every tax dollar go for other expenses, including six figure incomes for school administrators and, in a staggering example, a school board secretary who makes $180,000. On the other side are the supporters of a charter education 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 deficient one, basically can't be fired -- which provides zero effort to do much literal instruction.
"The documentary examines lots of out of the ordinary aspects of public education, tenure, backing, support drops, corruption --meaning theft -- vouchers and charter schools," says Bowdon. "And as such it kind of serves as a rapid-moving primer on all of the raging topics between the education-reform crusade."
Bowdon's docudrama started touring the festival circuit in summer of 2009 and made its theatrical debut in April 2010. Hopefully it will get a rise, and not be overshadowed, by the more recently released documentary "Waiting for Superman," by "An Inconvenient Truth" director Davis Guggenheim. Bowdon sees the films as complementary, and hopes that "Superman," with its human-interest position, draws more interest to his own, which focuses on public policy. "The two films make exchangeable conclusions," Bowdon says.
The left-brained approach means arguments that watch the economics -- money misspent, opportunities wasted. He follows the money to extract conclusions about how shameless the Jersey school system is, but his picture features moments of elevated emotion and grief. A girl's weeping upon hearing that she wasn't selected to attend a charter school, that she's stuck in her public school, exemplify the failure of a system as well as Bowdon's charts and interviews.
It's difficult to see a film about corruption in Jersey and not think of the mob, but it's also unmistakable that this is a national problem seen through a tight lens. A watcher anyplace in the country will discern similar failings in their own school system, and may share Bowdon's frustration and eagerness for a resolution. Bowdon puts his faith in the charter schools, where the taxpayer has influence over the kind and quality of instruction. Nevertheless he also knows it'll be an upward struggle to recover control from those who've worked so hard to make education very profitable for the very few.
On the one side is the monumental Jersey teachers union and shady school officials, who make certain that, as Bowdon points out in his picture, 90 cents of every tax dollar go for other expenses, including six figure incomes for school administrators and, in a staggering example, a school board secretary who makes $180,000. On the other side are the supporters of a charter education 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 deficient one, basically can't be fired -- which provides zero effort to do much literal instruction.
"The documentary examines lots of out of the ordinary aspects of public education, tenure, backing, support drops, corruption --meaning theft -- vouchers and charter schools," says Bowdon. "And as such it kind of serves as a rapid-moving primer on all of the raging topics between the education-reform crusade."
Bowdon's docudrama started touring the festival circuit in summer of 2009 and made its theatrical debut in April 2010. Hopefully it will get a rise, and not be overshadowed, by the more recently released documentary "Waiting for Superman," by "An Inconvenient Truth" director Davis Guggenheim. Bowdon sees the films as complementary, and hopes that "Superman," with its human-interest position, draws more interest to his own, which focuses on public policy. "The two films make exchangeable conclusions," Bowdon says.
The left-brained approach means arguments that watch the economics -- money misspent, opportunities wasted. He follows the money to extract conclusions about how shameless the Jersey school system is, but his picture features moments of elevated emotion and grief. A girl's weeping upon hearing that she wasn't selected to attend a charter school, that she's stuck in her public school, exemplify the failure of a system as well as Bowdon's charts and interviews.
It's difficult to see a film about corruption in Jersey and not think of the mob, but it's also unmistakable that this is a national problem seen through a tight lens. A watcher anyplace in the country will discern similar failings in their own school system, and may share Bowdon's frustration and eagerness for a resolution. Bowdon puts his faith in the charter schools, where the taxpayer has influence over the kind and quality of instruction. Nevertheless he also knows it'll be an upward struggle to recover control from those who've worked so hard to make education very profitable for the very few.
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