The school system could be made to be overly profitable, says Bob Bowdon, although exclusively at the expense of things like teachers and students. In his docudrama "The Cartel," New Jersey TV news reporter Bowdon shines a light on the depravity and greed that has resulted in the disappearance of so much taxpayer money in that state. The numbers tell the tale: $17,000 exhausted per student, and there's but a 39% reading proficiency rate, it's tough to argue that there's a crisis afoot, but harder to agree on a solution.
Present are two major factions in Bowdon's movie -- the villains are reasonably clearly the Jersey teachers union and school board who funnel 90 cents of every dollar away from teachers' salaries and towards incidentals, including six-figure salaries for school administrators. On the other side are the supporters of charter schools -- private schools that can operate beyond the influence of what Bowdon calls The Cartel. Bowdon makes much of the fact that it's almost unimaginable for an instructor to be fired, a safety net that does little to incite hard work in those teachers who acknowledge they have a vocation irrespective of how many of the three Rs they teach -- if any.
"'The Cartel' examines lots of diverse aspects of public education, tenure, financing, patronage drops, corruption --meaning theft -- vouchers and charter schools," says Bowdon. "The expression education documentary may sound to some like dull squared, but in fact the picture itself betrays an ardent passion for the predicament of particularly inner-city children."
"The Cartel" first appeared on the festival circuit in summer 2009, appearing in theaters countrywide a year later. Hopefully it will get a boost, and not be overshadowed, by the more recently released documental "Waiting for Superman," by "An Inconvenient Truth" director Davis Guggenheim. Bowdon sees the films as complementary, and hopes that "Superman," with its human-interest stance, draws more notice to his own, which focuses on public policy. "My movie is the left-brained edition, more analytical," Bowdon says, "'Waiting for Superman' is more the right-brained treatment."
And Bowdon's film is relentlessly critical, making a potent case for the view that the quantity of money spent is nowhere near as eminent as how it is spent. But that isn't to say the film is without heart. Bowdon makes sure his eye is continually on the people affected, particularly the inner-city students trapped in a disordered system. The tearful face of a young girl who learns she was not selected for a spot at a charter school makes its own intense argument for the dissatisfactory failure of a state's education system.
And although it may be effortless to admit the presence of corruption in a state so associated with organized crime, the uncomfortable fact of the subject is that this is a greatly familiar situation. Bowdon's film illustrates a local difficulty, but any watcher will realize the systems of system failure in their own state's schools. Bowdon comes out in favor of the charter school plan, of taxpayers being able to choose their own schools, to get out from under the state's control. Nevertheless he also knows it'll be an uphill conflict to recover control from those who've worked so hard to make education very profitable for the very few. - 40729
Present are two major factions in Bowdon's movie -- the villains are reasonably clearly the Jersey teachers union and school board who funnel 90 cents of every dollar away from teachers' salaries and towards incidentals, including six-figure salaries for school administrators. On the other side are the supporters of charter schools -- private schools that can operate beyond the influence of what Bowdon calls The Cartel. Bowdon makes much of the fact that it's almost unimaginable for an instructor to be fired, a safety net that does little to incite hard work in those teachers who acknowledge they have a vocation irrespective of how many of the three Rs they teach -- if any.
"'The Cartel' examines lots of diverse aspects of public education, tenure, financing, patronage drops, corruption --meaning theft -- vouchers and charter schools," says Bowdon. "The expression education documentary may sound to some like dull squared, but in fact the picture itself betrays an ardent passion for the predicament of particularly inner-city children."
"The Cartel" first appeared on the festival circuit in summer 2009, appearing in theaters countrywide a year later. Hopefully it will get a boost, and not be overshadowed, by the more recently released documental "Waiting for Superman," by "An Inconvenient Truth" director Davis Guggenheim. Bowdon sees the films as complementary, and hopes that "Superman," with its human-interest stance, draws more notice to his own, which focuses on public policy. "My movie is the left-brained edition, more analytical," Bowdon says, "'Waiting for Superman' is more the right-brained treatment."
And Bowdon's film is relentlessly critical, making a potent case for the view that the quantity of money spent is nowhere near as eminent as how it is spent. But that isn't to say the film is without heart. Bowdon makes sure his eye is continually on the people affected, particularly the inner-city students trapped in a disordered system. The tearful face of a young girl who learns she was not selected for a spot at a charter school makes its own intense argument for the dissatisfactory failure of a state's education system.
And although it may be effortless to admit the presence of corruption in a state so associated with organized crime, the uncomfortable fact of the subject is that this is a greatly familiar situation. Bowdon's film illustrates a local difficulty, but any watcher will realize the systems of system failure in their own state's schools. Bowdon comes out in favor of the charter school plan, of taxpayers being able to choose their own schools, to get out from under the state's control. Nevertheless he also knows it'll be an uphill conflict to recover control from those who've worked so hard to make education very profitable for the very few. - 40729
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