Waiting for Clark Kent: What Waiting for Superman gets wrong

I think I was, officially, the last person in the education field in America to see "Waiting for 'Superman.' " Already, it feels a little dated - at least in my state (Rhode Island) where we've taken major steps at the state level to right some of the obvious wrongs in the education system: teachers who are not evaluated and who are guaranteed jobs for life regardless of performance. The film makes it very clear that bad teachers are harmful to students and that good teachers can advance student learning in any environment, regardless of poverty. There are a few things the film misses, however. First, it's obvious that poverty does present special challenges, which the film does not address at all. Second, the film finds a single cause for the dismal performance in American schools: teachers' unions. Yet the highest-performing states are the most heavily unionized, and the lowest-performing are nonunion states (mostly in the South). Management is as much at fault or more so. Third, the film builds a very nice drama by following 5 kids in their quest to get into charter schools by lottery, but this falsely leaves the impression that charters are the answer. No doubt there should be more charters, but far more important - there should be more innovation in traditional public schools. The filmmakers simply write off traditional public schools as intractable, partly because Michelle Rhee couldn't move the needle in DC - which is mainly because she was so confrontational that ultimately she had no support or trust. Anyway, a provocative film but it falls victim to a short-sighted view of school reform and to a simplistic narrative arc that tells a good story but misses the mark.