February 2008
EFF Films
The film's title is Flunked, but that's misleading. It spends far less time dwelling on bad U.S. schools than featuring the good ones. This movie will not teach ed policy analysts much that's new; it is meant to introduce rather than dissect some of the most successful educational approaches being tried around the country. Headlining the tour are Ben Chavis, founder of the American Indian Public Charter School, and Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot Public Schools. Both speak with conviction about the importance of strong leadership, high-quality teaching and curricula, and high standards. The film's sweeping pans of orderly classrooms, with narrator Joe Mantegna (that's Joey Zaza to fans of Godfather Part III) telling tales of sky-rocketing test scores, are clear evidence that the featured schools, most of them charters, are doing something right. The film tries to explain their success by providing some basics on free-market principles; Cato scholar Andrew Coulson is interviewed, for example. But it doesn't dig deep enough to reveal precisely what makes the schools profiled so different from their regular district counterparts. It's not necessarily a knock on the film, which lasts only 45 minutes. The producers knew they'd have to paint in broad strokes. It would be nice, though, to see someone document in stark detail the contrasts between thriving charter schools and failing district schools. Nonetheless, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, which made the film, deserves praise for its fine product. Check out Flunked at flunkedthemovie.com.
