I shouldn't comment because I haven't seen the whole movie yet, only bits, but here goes anyway. It not only seems to ignore the inappropriate and ineffective system required by NCLB and its Testing is Everything mindset, but also the critical role that parents play in the education of their children.
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The movie seems more like fuel for the private charter school crowd who are salivating at the prospect of being handed tens or hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars with little to no oversight.
If a school gets most of its money from the public, then its not a private school.
On the one hand, NCLB sucks but charter schools lack oversight? Seems like oversight is the issue in the first place?
Parents not involved? Who wants to be involved when you have no choice or say in the matter?
Teachers motivated when they feel helpless?
The way to get the parents involved is to offer them a way to get skin the game by giving them a choice which will then cause the schools that have their act together to grow while those that don't, fail.
We've had urban flight for 40 years now thus giving half the nation a way to force schools to compete due to the growth of the suburbs.
We need to fix the other half.
When we talk about bad schools, we are not talking about professional communities or most rural school districts. The place where charter schools are desperately needed are places like Detroit, Memphis and New Orleans. Places where most of the graduating class is illiterate, poor, and non-white, where there is systematic corruption, neglect, and low expectations.
