The school system could be made to be very much profitable, says Bob Bowdon, but at the expense of things equal to teachers and students. In his education documentary "The Cartel," Bowdon, a TV news reporter in New Jersey, paints a grand ugly impression of the institutional corruptness that has resulted in almost incredible wastes of taxpayer money. As $400,000 is spent per schoolroom, but reading proficiency is no more than 39% (and math at 40%), the crisis is evident, which doesn't indicate it's not controversial.
The two sides of this struggle meet head-on in interviews throughout Bowdon's movie: there are the teachers union and school board members who have managed to allocate 90 cents of every taxpayer buck into everything but teachers' salaries -- though' various school administrators make upwards of $100,000. 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 get away from the public nightmare. Bowdon makes much of the fact that it's practically impossible for a teacher to be fired. Thus having a safety net that does little to promote hard work in those teachers who acknowledge they hold a vocation regardless of how many of the three Rs they instruct -- if any.
"'The Cartel' examines lots of uncommon aspects of public teaching, tenure, financing, support drops, corruption --meaning larceny -- vouchers and charter schools," says Bowdon. "And as such it kind of serves as a quick-moving primer on all of the heavy topics amongst the education-reform movement."
"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 view a film about corruption in Jersey and not think of the mob, but it's also unambiguous that this is a national crisis seen through a tight lens. Bowdon's film illustrates a local dilemma, but any watcher will discern the systems of system failure in their own state's schools. The one he seems to be most behind is the charter schools, which take the reins from the unions and give them back to the taxpayer. But "The Cartel" also shows us how laborious it's going to be to get that control back from those who've found it so profitable. - 40723
The two sides of this struggle meet head-on in interviews throughout Bowdon's movie: there are the teachers union and school board members who have managed to allocate 90 cents of every taxpayer buck into everything but teachers' salaries -- though' various school administrators make upwards of $100,000. 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 get away from the public nightmare. Bowdon makes much of the fact that it's practically impossible for a teacher to be fired. Thus having a safety net that does little to promote hard work in those teachers who acknowledge they hold a vocation regardless of how many of the three Rs they instruct -- if any.
"'The Cartel' examines lots of uncommon aspects of public teaching, tenure, financing, support drops, corruption --meaning larceny -- vouchers and charter schools," says Bowdon. "And as such it kind of serves as a quick-moving primer on all of the heavy topics amongst the education-reform movement."
"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 view a film about corruption in Jersey and not think of the mob, but it's also unambiguous that this is a national crisis seen through a tight lens. Bowdon's film illustrates a local dilemma, but any watcher will discern the systems of system failure in their own state's schools. The one he seems to be most behind is the charter schools, which take the reins from the unions and give them back to the taxpayer. But "The Cartel" also shows us how laborious it's going to be to get that control back from those who've found it so profitable. - 40723
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