Original subtitles

If I have four cookies and I ate two of them,

what portion did I eat?

You had four cookies, and you ate two,

and then you got to cross-multiply that.

Four, two, wait.

Four, two. Four, 20...

You ate f... you ate 50 percent of your cookie.

One of the saddest days of my life

was when my mother told me Superman did not exist.

I was a comic book reader, and I read comic books, and I just loved them.

'Cause even in the depths of the ghetto, you just thought,

"He's coming, I just don't know when, because he always shows up,

and he saves all the good people, and they never end up..."

I was reading, I don't know maybe I was in the fourth grade, fifth...

My mother... I was like, "You know, Ma, you think Superman is up there?"

She said, "Superman is not real."

I was like, "He's not? What do you mean he's not?" "No, he's not real."

And she thought I was crying because it's like Santa Claus is not real.

And I was crying because there was no one coming

with enough power to save us.

Every morning it's the same.

Juice, shoes, backpack,

the morning ritual.

And with it comes the uneasy feeling.

No matter who we are

or what neighborhood we live in,

each morning, wanting to believe in our schools...

...we take a leap of faith.

In 1999, I made a documentary about public school teachers...

- Plus? - Plus.

- What number's that? - Seven.

- One plus seven equals? - Eight.

...and I spent an entire school year

watching them dedicate their lives to children.

It's Friday.

You need to start doing better on these tests, OK?

- So write these... - These teachers embodied

a hope and carried with them a promise

that the idea of public school could work.

Ten years later, it was time to choose a school for my own children...

...and then reality set in.

My feelings about public education didn't matter as much

as my fear of sending them to a failing school.

And so every morning,

betraying the ideals I thought I lived by,

I drive past three public schools

as I take my kids to a private school.

But I'm lucky. I have a choice.

Other families pin their hopes to a bouncing ball,

a hand pulling a card from a box,

or a computer that generates numbers in random sequence.

Because when there's a great public school,

there aren't enough spaces, and so we do what's fair:

We place our children and their future

in the hands of luck.

- Are you good at school? - Yes.

- Tell me. - School's like, at first,

I was having difficulties at school,

but then, that's because I wasn't coming home and studying.

And then that's when I just started to study and I started to pass.

And I stayed back one grade, and that was in the second grade.

Why did you stay back?

- Why? - Because I was go...

'Cause my father had passed.

- Yeah? Do you remember that? - Yeah.

- What happened? - He just died.

He took drugs.

Thank you.

OK, see you. Have a good day. Have fun.

- OK. See you later. - Be careful.

OK.

And what was your choice in taking him in like?

There wasn't a choice. I mean, I wouldn't have had it any other way.

You know, I made a lot of mistakes, when I was younger, with my kids.

I don't know what I would do without him, at this point.

What, you? He needs you. Why do you need him?

I don't know. I think we need each other.

I really think we needs each other. I do.

And there's nothing I wouldn't do for him. Nothing.

One, two, three, four. We broke them up into thirds.

- Each circle represents what fraction? - Three.

- Three what? - Thirds.

Three-thirds. Three over three.

Someone raise your hand and tell me, what is 12 divided by two?

- Twelve divided by two. Anthony. - Six.

I want to... Well, I have a lot of choices.

I want to be a nurse, I want to be a doctor,

and I want to be a veterinarian.

How come?

Because I just love animals and I would like to tell...

I would like to help somebody in need.

How'd you get that idea?

I read books in the library.

When the Native Americans... came to the river,

what was the difference between when the settlers have it?

The settlers... the settlers had put pollution in it

and the Native Americans took care of it.

Good observation. How do you mean "pollution"?

Because they would use... throw all of, like,

they would throw all the paper endings to the river.

She chose her college and she wrote a letter to the admissions

and asking them to allow her to attend their college.

- Already? - Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

She's already... she knows what she's gonna do.

So, what would you say to me if I was your classmate and I said,

"It's too boring, and it's too much work.

I just want to quit school." What would you tell me?

Well, pay attention instead of being bored.

Just look at the teacher and find different ways

to make the learning fun.

...two, three! Next.

Do you think that Daisy could be a veterinarian?

Oh, yeah. If she wants to.

If she believes hard enough that she could do it,

- yeah, I believe her. - But she has to go to high school

and then college and then medical school.

College. Medical school. That's a long time.

I think... I believe that's six, seven years, eight years.

- Yeah, in college. - Think she can do it?

Yeah.

My dad's struggling.

He sort of doesn't have a job.

My mom's the one with the job,

and my dad is trying to get a job right now.

Bye...

Good schools. That's what all of us want,

but sometimes I wish someone would tell me just what these words mean.

It seems that we all have different ideas on the subject,

yet each of us feels that he has the very best solution.

Now, I grew up in the South Bronx in the '50s.

The school that I was supposed to go to was Morris High School.

If I had gone to Morris High School, I would not be sitting here today.

It was a horrible school. It was a failure factory.

I went into this business, I mean, literally,

straight out of college, the firstt thing I did was teach.

I went to the Harvard Graduate School of Education, majored in Education,

and I came out and I was ready.

And I figured it was gonna take me all of maybe two and half

to three years, if I, you know, wasn't on my A game,

to straighten out education in the nation. And then...

You wanted to straighten out the education in the nation?

In the nation! It was just... it wasn't that hard.

I was like, nah, I figured it out. I read the papers.

I understood, you know, what was going on.

This is '75, right? I figured by '77, '78,

I'd have this whole thing straightened out. And then I ran into this system.

It seems to me we need a great deal more information.

What do you think, Mr. Rice?

I'd like to suggest a committee.

You could not find the sort of architects

of why this thing was as bad as it was,

and yet nobody seemed to be willing to really look at this and say,

"This thing is an utter failure."

I'd like for this country to have a real education president for a change.

I'd like to be the education president.

I don't ever expect to sign my name to any law

that is more important than the Education Act of 1 965.

Our goal of quality education is on a collision course

with the escalating demands for the public dollar.

Since 1 971 , educational spending in the U.S.

has grown from $4,300 to more than $9,000 per student,

and that's adjusted for inflation.

...passage of tuition tax credits...

We must address some very real problems.

...voluntary school prayer...

It is not just a money problem, but it is a money problem.

...and abolishing the Department of Education.

So we've doubled what we spend on each child.

But double the money is worth it, if we're producing better results,

unfortunately, we're not.

Since 1 971 , reading scores have flat-lined,

and math is no better.

As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn.

The day of reckoning is here.

Do you like school?

- No. - No?

'Cause sometimes math is too hard for kids,

so kids say, "I don't like math!

I don't like math!" And I say, "I like math."

- So you do kind of like school. - Everybody says they don't like math.

And I... I'm the only one who says, "I like math."

What do you want to be when you grow up?

A recorder... like you guys.

Come on, Francisco. I don't hear you.

Francisco, that's 'cause you cut your hair.

I can use the spray.

Make sure you close your eyes. Don't put it in your eyes.

I haven't been inside the school. Describe it to me.

If I was to walk in the school, what kind of feelings would I have?

- What would I see? - Walking in, you'll see a desk

with a security guard. That's it. You can go no further than that.

They're in the district that's the third largest overcrowded school in the Bronx.

Public education, you know, that's the only option we have here.

This is...

Kids look at the world and they make certain

predictions based on the evidence

they are receiving from their peers,

from their parents and from their teachers.

From their perspective, the world is a heartless,

cold-blooded place, because they realize they've been given

the short end of the stick, and they don't know why.

Hi. It's Bianca's mom. I'm around the corner.

I'll be there in a few minutes.

A, apple. B, bug. C...

Say it in sign language.

- D, dog. E... F... - Hello?

Bianca, say it in sign language, with your hands.

Come on.

Come on. Push it open.

I never did envision having children.

It's... It's something, 'cause they grow so fast,

and you just see so many different things with them.

- Mail? - It's my song.

Oh, you have to read these out loud by yourself?

Yeah.

- When did she give this to you? - Today.

I don't care what I have to do.

I don't care how many jobs L have to obtain,

but she will go to college, and there's just...

no second-guessing on that one.

"Take my apples, boy, and sell them in the city.

Then you will have money, and you will be happy..."

When you go to college, you learn,

you get your education, and you don't get a job,

you get a career, that there's a difference.

"...and the tree was happy."

In January of 2002, after decades of empty lip service

and political bickering, it seemed for a moment

that what had proved impossible might suddenly be possible.

Two men, a conservative Republican president

and a leader of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party,

were ready to put aside their partistan differencest

for the sake of America's children.

America, the world's only remaining superpower,

the nation that had put a man on the moon,

was finally going to fix education.

And now it's up to you, the local citizens of our great land,

to stand up and demand, no child,

not one single child in America, is left behind.

It was a bold promise,

and to make good on that promise,

the architects of No Child Left Behind

decided to measure every student in the country.

I understand taking tests aren't fun. Too bad.

We need to know in America,

we need to know whether or not children have got the basic education.

So now it's eight yearst later,

and we have four yearst left to reach our goal:

1 00 percent proficiency in math and reading.

In Alabama, only 1 8 percent of eighth graderst are proficient in math,

and next door in Mississippi, it's only 1 4 percent.

And it's not just Southern states.

New Jersey, 40 percent.

Connecticut, 35 percent.

New York, 30 percent.

Arizona, 26 percent.

And in California, just 24 percent of eighth graders

are proficient in math.

When eighth graders across the country were tested for reading,

most scored between 20 and 35 percent of grade level.

The worstt scores for reading are in Washington, D.C.,

our nation's capital.

So you're a kid, you're doing fine in school

till you hit the fourth grade, fifth grade.

Between the fifth grade and the seventh grade,

you see a huge number of minority kids

go from being B students to D students.

Now, one of two things is happening.

Either the kids are getting stupider every year, right?

Or something is wrong in the education system.

But what do kids... So I'm ten, I've been a good student.

I'm 1 1 , I'm a C student.

I'm 12, I'm a D student.

What do you think I think is going on?

And I'm looking now, let's say, I'm in the seventh grade.

I'm going nowhere.

No.

How was school for you?

It was good, but I'm one of the guys that

dropped out of school because of money.

My dad, my dad was getting laid off every so often,

and money was needed in the house, food was needed on the table.

I want to go to a medical college or a veterinarian college

to study about people and animals,

because I really want to become a surgeon.

Daisy's path to medical school begins with eighth grade algebra,

which she'll need to take when she moves up to Stevenson Middle School.

By the time she leaves Stevenson,

only 1 3 percent of her classmates will be proficient in math.

I might go to Stevenson.

My sister goes there and she says it's really fun,

just that people make a big drama about it.

Stevenson feeds into Roosevelt,

one of the worstt performing high schools in Los Angeles.

The way that the California public university system is set up

is there's a set of 1 5 courses called the A through G,

that you have to meet

in order to be accepted into a four-year university.

Only three out of a hundred students at Roosevelt

will graduate with the classes necessary for admission to a four-year universtity.

And 57 percent of Daisy's classmates won't graduate.

We basically know which students are gonna drop out in the next five yearst.

We know which schools they go to, and with just a little bit of digging,

we can see them raising their hands and saying, "Help."

Dr. Robert Balfanz, at Johns Hopkins University,

has been studying schools like Roosevelt.

He calls these schools, where over 40 percent

of the students don't graduate on time, "dropout factories."

Balfanz began to see a pattern:

in cities, suburbs and rural areas,

failing elementary and middle schools,

feeding poorly educated students into local high schools,

where they last one or two years.

In his research, he found over 2,000 dropout factories.

Locke High School in Los Angeles was one of the worst.

In 2008, Steve Barr took control.

Between ninth and tenth grade at this school,

they go from 1 ,200 freshmen to 300 to 400 sophomores.

So, we lose, you know, 800 kids between ninth and tenth grade.

They come in the ninth grade. This school, the kids read somewhere

between a first and third-grade reading level,

and they've been pushed through the system.

This school's 40 years old.

I think about 60,000 people have gone to this school in 40 years.

Sixty thousand. Forty thousand didn't graduate.

So over 40 years,

this is the damage that this school has done to this neighborhood.

To be 1 5 years old and a dropout,

they're not going to write screenplays.

Millions of kids are walking the streets who have no vested interest in living.

They dropped out of school.

They have no diplomas. They have no skills.

And you could name the places where the schools...

You can talk about Detroit, East Baltimore,

Camden, South Central, this has all been going, this has...

since I was a child and even before.

For generations, experts tended to blame

failing schools on failing neighborhoods.

But reformerst have begun to believe the opposite,

that the problems of failing neighborhoods

might be blamed on failing schools.

Bill Strickland has seen this firsthand in his own neighborhood.

- This it here? - Yeah, this is Oliver High School.

He went to Oliver High School, a dropout factory in Pittsburgh.

Most of the kids had no aspirations.

They had no clue where they were going.

So this is the State Correctional Institution in Pittsburgh.

That's where a bunch of my buddies are.

Rather than getting on with their life,

the vast majority of the guys end up here or dead.

Sixty-eight percent of inmates in Pennsylvania

are high school dropouts.

The state spends $33,000 a year on each prisoner...

...which makes the total cost of the average prison term $1 32,000.

The average private school cost $8,300 a year.

So, for the same amount,

we could have sent a prison inmate to a private school

from kindergarten through 1 2th grade,

and still had over $24,000 left for college.

It's a very expensive hotel, man.

You gotta feed them three meals a day.

You have to provide recreation. You have to provide security.

You have to provide medical care.

These guys don't pay taxes. They don't work.

It's money that goes one way only.

I'm just so afraid for him.

I cries for him sometime,

'cause I'm just so afraid. I am.

I pray about Ant all the time,

'cause I know he can easily be influenced to do things

that he shouldn't do, and it scares me.

He never knew his mom.

Think his mom had other kids,

but Anthony doesn't know those kids.

My mom left me when I was probably about eight,

so my grandparents raised me.

Was school important to you?

No. It wasn't.

Hey, it probably wasn't because I never had nobody to push me,

you know, to talk to me about stuff, so it wasn't.

And your son?

He didn't... He didn't think school was important either. No.

He didn't.

But he did his thing, I guess.

I pledge allegiance to the flag

of the United States of America,

and to the republic for which it stands,

one nation, under God, indivisible,

with liberty and justice for all.

It's the worstt possible example of public stchooling in the United Statest.

You know, lots of districts have certain things wrong with them.

D.C. has everything wrong with it.

Good morning, my friends.

Good morning, Miss Thomas.

Well, are you excited about what we're gonna do today?

- Yes. - We wanna get a good look

at what middle school is gonna look like.

Kimball Elementary has been struggling.

But with a good teacher this year,

Anthony is showing promise.

Next year, Anthony's class will leave Kimball

and move up to junior high.

This is Sousa. It's a middle school.

This is basically our neighborhood school.

So when our children leaves Kimball,

they would automatically be enrolled in Sousa.

And we're gonna try to also...

Most will go to John Philip Sousa,

which the Washington Post called "an academic sinkhole."

If Anthony goes to Sousa, odds are, he will enter high school

three to five grade levels behind.

You wake up every morning and you know that 46,000 kids

are counting on you, and that most of them are getting

a really crappy education right now,

and you have the ability to do something about that.

So you think that most of the kids in D.C.

are getting a crappy education right now?

Oh, I don't think they are. I know they are.

Within the last hour, I signed a mayoral order

to appoint Michelle Rhee as acting chancellor

of the District of Columbia Public Schools.

In 2007, the education world went into a frenzy

over the possibility that Michelle Rhee and D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty

could actually turn around the school district.

Just in case there was any confusion, I am 37 years old,

and, no, I have never run a school district before.

Fenty picked somebody who had never gotten a Ph.D.,

who had only been a teacher three years,

hadn't been a principal, hadn't been a superintendent anywhere else,

and said she was going to tear up the district.

All of the eyes in the country are now on D.C.

I think we have a strategy committee

- meeting later, right? - Yeah.

- OK. I'll see you for that. - OK.

Bye.

Michelle Rhee is the seventh superintendent

of the D.C. schools in just ten yearst.

Each of her predecessorst promised radical change,

and that this time, they could turn their schools around.

Lieutenant General Julius Becton,

who was awarded two Purple Hearts

and a Silver Star for heroic acts in battle,

said he never faced a more difficult task

than reforming the schools of Washington.

Remember, children first.

Failure is not an option.

It should be simple:

a teacher in a schoolhouse,

filling her students with knowledge,

and sending them on their way.

But we've made it complicated.

Why is it that the same student who fails a proficiency test

in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, can drive a mile south

and pass a similar test in Enfield, Connecticut?

Here's why: The federal government passes laws

and sends money to the states,

but the states fund schools, too,

and set their own, often-conflicting standards.

And there are more than 1 4,000 autonomous school boards...

...making school governance a tangled mess

of conflicting regulations and mixed agendas.

You've got local school boards,

people from the State Departments of Education,

Federal Department of Education,

district superintendents and their huge staffs.

The things we've done to help our schools work better

have become the things that prevent them from working.

This whole collection of people, which is sometimes called "The Blob,"

like out of some horror movie, has been an impediment to reform.

No individual is necessarily to blame, but collectively,

they are the Goliath of the system.

Central Office is this behemoth that all your

taxpayer dollars go to, and it's what I lead.

It's this organization that I lead, that's the Central Office.

The District gives the Central Office a pile of money.

Right. The city government gives the District of Columbia Public Schools,

the Central Office, a pile of money, to your point.

And the Central Office then proceeds to screw everything up.

Michelle Rhee's first move

would be to tackle the problems of her vast bureaucracy.

I mean, this district did not become the way that it is by accident.

There's a complete and utter lack of accountability

for the job that we're supposed to be doing,

which is producing results for kids.

Go, stop.

Go. Stop. Go.

This is only his second year there.

You know, firstt grade for him has been very horrible.

Francisco hasn't had...

He hasn't been that fortunate with teachers.

Maybe that attitude of him not liking school comes from that, I think.

His teacher is telling me that he has difficulty in reading.

The teacher said he wasn't being focused and this and that.

That he's at risk of staying behind, repeating firstt grade,

which I don't understand, because I do work with him at home.

- Is this a bat? - Bat or rat?

- Mommy? - Rat.

- Mommy, this is subtracting? - R.

- I don't have an "R." - I don't know. You tell me.

- Sound it out. - "...kinds of loads."

- Very good. - "...this yellow car makes it go.

Go, go, go. Don't be slow.

- Beep, beep." - Very good.

So when you stand there, what's the feeling of the place?

Why bother? You know, it's like, why?

Why are my kids here? Why? Why do I have to go through this?

There's a lot of why, whys,

and to the point where I get upset...

They have a van.

...and wishing I could do better for my kids.

- Right there? - Yeah. Did you tell Mr. Saxon

that Mommy said that she needed your folder?

- Yeah, and I got it. - OK. So he said that was OK?

- Yeah. - OK.

- We're stuck. - It doesn't seem fair.

It's not fair, but this is where we live.

Yes, hi. My name is Mrs. Regalado,

and I would like to leave a message for Mr. Saxon.

Thank you.

Yeah, I would just like to have a teacher-parent conference with him.

After lots of studies, we come down to just what most parents believe,

and that is a good teacher is what's working

and a bad teacher is what's not working.

Eric Hanushek has tracked the effect

of individual teachers on groups of kids.

The difference between a really good teacher and a really bad teacher

is one year of learning per academic year.

Students with high-performing teacherst progreststed three timest ast fastt

as those with low-performing teacherst,

and yet they cost the same to the school.

A bad teacher covers only 50 percent

of the required curriculum in a school year.

A good teacher can cover 1 50 percent.

They gave a kid a video camera,

and he put it in his book bag.

- What are we doing in here today? - Nothing!

He videotaped kids shooting crap in the back of the room.

He videotaped teachers reading newspapers.

We had a teacher put a kid's head in a soiled toilet.

- Where's our teacher at? - They mic me up live,

turn on the television,

and I see all of this going on. So, the guy asked me,

"What are you gonna do?"

I said, "I'm gonna fire these people!"

My staff is in the back of the room going like this, like,

"Man, you can't fire nobody. You can't...

What, you can't say that." I thought I was in charge.

Howard Fuller fired the worst teachers in the video,

but was forced to rehire them with a year's back pay

because of a provision in the teachers' contract called "tenure,"

which guaranteed theirjobs for life.

The idea of tenure started in universities.

It was meant to protect professorst from getting fired

for arbitrary or political reasons.

In universtities, professorst are only granted tenure

after many yearst of teaching

and a grueling vetting process, and many don't receive it.

But for public school teacherst, tenure has become automatic.

Three, two, one. OK, children, I've just been granted tenure.

So I'm gonna sit back and let Ralph teach for a while.

Class, in what year was one plus one?

The answer is The Amazing Ralph!

You can get tenure basically if you continue to breathe

for two years, you'll get it, and whether or not you can help children

is totally irrelevant to whether or not...

And once you get tenure, we cannot get rid of you.

Almost no matter what you do, you are there for life,

even if it's proven you're a lousy teacher.

Are you gonna teach us anything, or are we just gonna sit here?

Just do whatever you want.

- I wanna learn from my teacher. - Besides that!

Look, if we were talking about people

who made Tastykakes, right, I'd say,

"Look, I'm worried that they might get rid

of the poor people who put the squiggles on Tastykakes."

I'm sure it's a machine. "They ought to be protected

and we should make sure they don't lose their job, right?"

American educators, organizing into unions,

on strike against conditions they consider no longer tolerable.

They used to be able to get away with paying women teachers

very little money, because their husbands worked,

and that's how teachers' unions started.

Teachers had little protection or recourse

from a system that routinely took advantage of them.

Teachers organized because they're in that situation

where they're infantilized and told what to do. And yet, in their classroom,

they know they have these huge responsibilities,

and so they said, "Look, how am I going to get the power?"

If you care about the students you teach,

if you wanna make a difference in their lives,

if you wanna advocate for what they believe in,

you have to go where the decision-makers are.

Taken together,

the two biggest teachers' unions, the NEA and AFT,

are the largest campaign contributors in the country.

Over the last 20 yearst, they've given over 55 million dollars

to federal candidates and their parties,

more than the Teamsters, the NRA

or any other individual organization,

and more than 90 percent of this money goes to Democrats.

At the national level,

the Democratic Party was a wholly owned subsidiary

of the teachers' unions on education policy.

Now, at the state level, where a lot of policy is made,

the Republican Party was also, and continues to be,

very tied in with the teachers' unions.

We have often been called a special interest,

and I will never apologize for that

because our special interests are the students we teach.

They're worth fighting for

with every weapon in our arsenal.

I kept running into this issue of,

Hey, you know what? I don't think we can do anything

unless we deal with the unions.

Nope, nope. That's off the table.

You can't even bring it up? No. Why can't you even talk...?

No. Because it's off the table.

The mayors didn't wanna talk about it, the folks at the state houses,

the governor, no one wanted to bring this up.

The teachers' unions, in general, have taken a position

that I don't think is actually in their own interest,

but the position that they've taken is

that we shouldn't make any distinctions among teachers.

A teacher is a teacher is a teacher.

So, this is

an evaluation process for all teachers.

It's called the Professional Performance Evaluation Process,

or colloquially the P-PEP.

And there are strict rules to replace a failing teacher.

It has 23 steps.

There is an initial conference at the beginning of the year.

Weekly assistance must be provided.

Then the observation has to occur, it has to be a certain number of minutes.

Then there's a post conference which needs to happen after the observation.

Over those 90 days, the principal must do three more observations...

If it isn't completed by January,

you have to wait until the following year.

There's lots of forms and dates and deadlines

that have to be followed, and if a single date is missed,

for whatever reason, the entire process can be subject to grievance.

I don't know, it just feels like a strange...

...game to me.

Jason Kamras is not just a cold-hearted bureaucrat.

In 2005, he was named teacher of the year.

People like Kamras will tell you,

there's nothing more difficult than the life of a teacher.

I saw this when I followed the teachers in my firstt documentary.

It was an incredible thing,

their total devotion to the lives of children.

And I could see just how tough theirjobs were:

battling learning problems, issues at home,

and rules from the system.

One day it can be really good, and one day it can be, like,

not so good, and then the next day it can be, like, horrible.

But the other thing reformerst and experts will tell you,

often under their breath, is that their biggest obstacle

to real reform is a contract with the teachers' union

which ties their hands.

So if you wanna reward a really good teacher,

who's kicking ass, knocking it out of the park, can you do that?

We, under the current contract, cannot pay teachers

more based upon their performance.

- Why not? - It's not in the contract.

The muscle and the zeal that built our union is still with us.

You are heroes!

It's very, very important to hold two contradictory ideas

in your head at the same time.

Teachers are great, a national treasure.

Teachers' unions are, generally speaking,

a menace and an impediment to reform.

I'm a superintendent.

I'm assigning kids over to a school.

The day I send them over there, I know they ain't gonna learn nothing,

'cause ain't nobody learned anything over there in 20 years.

You go into a school building, right?

And you go into this classroom where this great learning is taking place.

Then you walk right next door to death.

Teachers used to pass me notes, "Make sure you go to room 222."

And the principal, who would be taking me around,

before I go in, "OK, Howard, I wanna tell you.

This is one of my, what they call 'two-80-T'."

What that is, is a provision in the contract

that provided what we call the "dance of the lemons."

- And... - The what?

"The dance of the lemons."

So when you have a system that's completely dysfunctional,

you see good people do strange things.

In Milwaukee, they call it the "dance of the lemons."

Here's how it works.

Principals have their lemons.

These are teachers who are chronically bad.

They know it, the other teachers know it,

the school knows it,

but the union contract says you can't fire them.

So at the end of the year,

all the principals get together and they do the lemon dance.

Fred gives Jack his lemons,

Jack gives Sally his lemons,

and Sally gives Greg her lemons.

The lemon dance.

Each principal hopes the teachers he's stuck with

at the end of the dance are somehow better

than the ones he's getting rid of

and that this year he'll finally be able

to take his lemons and make lemonade.

Each state deals with this in a different way.

In some states, it's "pass the trash,"

others, it's the "turkey trot."

In New York, they have something else.

Tenured teachers awaiting disciplinary hearings on offenses

ranging from excessive lateness to sexual abuse,

along with those accused of incompetence,

are sent to the reassignment center

or what the rest of the world calls the "Rubber Room."

These 600 teachers collect their full salaries

and accumulate benefits for spending seven hourst a day

reading or playing cards.

They spend an average of three years in the Rubber Room.

Their hearings last eight times longer than the average criminal case.

The cost to the state of New York:

100 million dollars a year.

And none of this deals with the larger pool of teacherst

who just aren't good at theirjob.

If, in fact, we could just eliminate

the bottom six to ten percent of our teachers

and replace them with an average teacher,

we could bring the average U.S. student up to the level of Finland,

which is at the top of the world today.

The state of Illinois has 876 school districts,

only 61 of them have ever attempted to fire a tenured teacher,

and of those 61 , only 38 were successful

in actually firing a teacher.

Compare that to other professions.

For doctors, one in 57 lose their medical licenses.

One in 97 attorneys lose their law licenses.

But for teacherst, only one in 2,500

have ever lost their teaching credentials.

I actually know how hard it is

to be a good teacher.

Then I taught English and I taught social studies,

and I taught it to high school kids who were two and three years behind.

And after all of my preparation,

I was a terrible teacher for the first two years.

I mean, I was better than the other teachers, but we were all terrible.

We could not move that group of kids.

It took me three years to become a decent teacher

before I really learned my craft,

and in about five years, I was a master teacher.

When Geoffrey Canada pusthed for change,

he was met at every step by a system

with an infinite power to resist and defeat his reforms.

So he joined a small group of teacherst and parents

who were looking for solutions elsewhere.

In the early '90s, a few communities began granting

provistional charterst to create stchoolst that weren't bound

by the rules of the district or union contracts.

Do you know anybody in the fourth grade?

It's a free public school for...

It's a college prep charter school,

completely free, over off the Marcy stop.

Charter schools were a controversial experiment:

public schools with public money,

but independently run.

When there's limited space,

by law the school must hold a lottery.

Geoffrey Canada petitioned to start a charter school

in the worstt-performing district in New York State.

We chose 97 blocks in Central Harlem.

It had the worst educational outcomes for children,

and we came here because it had the worst.

These 97 blocks have the highest rate of foster care,

and twice the unemployment rate of the rest of New York City.

Many experts believed that even the most motivated educators

could not overcome the problems that these children brought from home.

But despite the failures of reformers before him,

Geoffrey Canada made a promise to the families of Harlem.

Your child comes to this school,

we will guarantee that we will get your child into college.

We will be with you, with your child,

from the moment they enter our school

to the moment they graduate from college.

I grew up in the public school system.

I had a economics teacher,

and that teacher refused to teach.

When you hear, "Well, I get paid whether or not

you learn or not," it sticks with you.

And that's something that no parent wants their child

to ever be a witness to or to hear when they're going to school.

If I'm trusting you with my child and teaching my child,

I expect you to do the same job that you would want

for your... for your own children.

And I just knew that I wanted her in parochial school.

Bianca's school is directly across the street from their home.

Every month, Nakia pays $500 tuition.

It's a struggle.

It's a struggle, but it's a choice that I made.

It's my responsibility to my child.

Her firstt year in school,

I had lost my job due to some layoffs,

and I did all that I could

and made sure that she still got her education.

One notebook.

Do you ever think if you sent Bianca

to a public school, there would be less pressure with money?

I have given that some thought,

but I revert right back to the same thing.

I'll just have to find a way.

There's nothing short of a firestorm surrounding

the future of the D.C. Public School system.

At the center of the controversty, new schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee.

D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee will not name names,

but more than 30 school principals are being terminated this week.

No shortage of outrage tonight among parents and teachers

caught up in the district's plan to close nearly two dozen public schools.

Fifty-seven teacherst and 77 support staff

are having to reapply for theirjobs.

Within a few months,

the initial burst of enthusiasm for Michelle Rhee had faded.

She had cut over a hundred jobs in the D.C. Central Office,

closed 23 schools and fired a quarter of all principals,

including the principal of her own children's school.

Don't close schools! Don't close schools!

If you wanna quickly become the most unpopular person in a city,

you just tell someone you're gonna close down a school, much less 23.

We work hard every day to make sure those strengths are strong.

I'm not a career superintendent.

This will be my one and only superintendency.

So I don't have to worry about pissing the unions off

and, you know, making this person upset or that person upset.

The bottom line is I don't believe that you are gonna be the leader who

is going to take this school to... in the direction that we need it to go in,

and have the highest expectations for the kids.

This scorched earth debate may actually make some people's career.

No, I'm terminating your principalship now.

May make somebody popular in terms of,

"I'm the change agent," but it's not gonna change schools.

We will not be moved! We will not be moved!

There is this unbelievable willingness

to turn a blind eye to the injustices that

are happening to kids every single day in our schools

in the name of harmony amongst adults.

Francisco? Francisco?

Good morning, sleepyhead.

Maria still hasn't heard from Francisco's teacher.

The old one is Spider-Man.

Francisco, tell Mr. Saxon to send Mommy your folder

because Mommy wants to know how you're doing in school.

He said we don't need it.

OK, but remember Mommy needs to know if you're paying attention,

if he's giving you stickers. Remember?

As I grew up going to college and was exposed to more,

only then did I realize how much I was cheated as

a child in my education.

This was the day I came back from college.

My dad, because of the diabetes, has stopped...

He wasn't able to move too much.

That day, he actually danced a song with me.

For my father, education was everything.

It was like if he would've had gotten a chance,

he would have become something in his life, rather than just a factory worker.

This is a fork, and it's not a "hork."

Right, 'cause "hork" isn't even a word. That's a made-up word, but...

- "Horse" is a word. - "Horse" is a word,

and there you would use "H." And what about this one?

Maria takes Francisco to a reading class at a nearby college.

Teachers are really overwhelmed,

'cause it's really hard to give each one that,

you know, individualized attention.

So it's more work for them to have these kinds of meetings.

If they can avoid them, unfortunately,

you have some teachers that will avoid them if they can.

Well, he's already been in two reading programs and teachers are telling me

that he knows how to read, he's comprehending,

and the teachers keep telling me

that there's something with his comprehension.

- Have you taken it beyond the school? - No.

You should.

If you want a better school for your kid, it's all about options.

But the system is confusing.

Let's say you live in a district with a hundred public schools.

Most are like Francisco's, not terrible, but not great.

A fifth will be failing,

and more will be hovering between mediocre and failing.

There's usually one mainstream school that's defying the odds.

With a great principal and outstanding teachers,

it can produce amazing results,

but you can't go there unless you live in that neighborhood.

So, for yearst, unless you could afford a private school,

you were stuck with your neighborhood school.

In the 1 960s, magnet schools were formed.

These were district-run schools to give families another choice.

Some were forjob training, some were for the arts

and some were for academics.

But there aren't that many magnets, and they're very difficult to get into.

In the '90s, public charter schools emerged.

They're independent from the district, but open to anyone who lived there.

But only one in five charterst is producing amazing results,

and so the numbers of families applying there are usually very high.

So a parent like Maria has to work hard

to find a great school for her kid.

She takes a 45-minute subway ride across the Harlem River

to look at a charter school.

One of the things that we've really put a lot of emphasis on

this past year is reading comprehension.

So not just can they read the words on the page with fluency?

It's do they really understand what they're reading?

Freddy was...

So is the difference between the school down here

and Harlem Success that great?

Yes. It's two different worlds.

"One Sunday morning, the wrong sun came up, and pop!

Out of the egg came a tiny..."

- Caterpillar. - Do you know...

Every student who's behind in reading is assigned

a tutor and has one until they're caught up.

How many books do you think you're gonna read by the end of the school,

by the time school finished?

Probably like the same amount that I read last year.

- Which was what? - One hundred and five.

Wow! Really?

I don't care if we have to wake up at 5:00 in the morning

in order to get there by 7:45, then that's what we will do.

And do you start this at third grade or do you start it from kindergarten?

- Kindergarten. - Kindergarten? Wow.

- That's what we do here. - So by the time they get to third,

this is easy for them. Yeah.

So if Francisco doesn't get in, is there another chance?

No. No, because he'll be going into second grade,

and most schools, they only take kindergarten, first and second,

so this is Francisco's last chance.

- Abuela birthday is in June. - June.

Harlem Success will take 40 second graders...

...with 792 families applying.

Why don't we skip...

Now, can anyone tell us what a picnic is?

A picnic is where you go out in the country

and eat food off the dirt.

Up until the 1 970s, American public schools were the best in the world.

Bob, you've been keeping your grades up. That's good.

The image of public schools in our films and TV reflects an ideal,

that even if you're unlucky enough to be born in the wrong neighborhood,

education could be a ticket out.

Mr. Vincent Barbarino, I don't see any homework.

All right, so I didn't do my homework.

So 'scuse me for living!

Public school was not an ordeal we had to survive,

but rather the single most important formative experience in our lives.

Since 1 900, U.S. public schools

have produced more than a hundred Nobel laureates,

ten presidents and countless numberst of great Americans.

Americans were really leading the world in educating its young people

because we had sort of this free education system,

and it was halfway decent, 40, 50 years ago.

We didn't really have global competition. I mean, we really didn't.

And everybody thought when Nixon opened China, right?

One of the... the time, you say, "Look, you know what's gonna happen

if we could just sell every Chinese perston

a toothbrush? We'll make billions! Why, there's just so many of them."

And we never realized that they would be selling us the toothbrushes.

Since the 1 970s, U.S. schools have failed to keep pace

with the rest of the world.

Among 30 developed countries, we rank 25th in math

and 21 st in science.

The top five percent of our students, our very best,

rank 23rd out of 29 developed countries.

In almost every category, we've fallen behind, except one.

The same study looked at math skills and found in these eight countries,

the USA ranked last. But when researchers asked the students

how they felt they had done, "Did I get good marks in mathematics,"

kids from the USA ranked number one in confidence.

We might be overconfident,

but if you look at the public stchoolst in our stuburbst,

this belief that we're number one doesn't seem so wrong.

Inner city schools may be failing,

but your kid's gonna be fine if his school has a new athletic facility,

an art center and a closed circuit system for the principal

to broadcast his morning messages.

Girls, when you're doing a water event,

I understand that you can wear a tankini,

but not a bykini, bikini.

People move into an area, and they know they're paying a lot of money

for their mortgage, for their house, so they assume that the school

must be just as nice as their house.

Many of the kids are actually doing quite poorly

when it comes to basic subjects like English and mathematics.

Redwood City is 30 minutes south of San Francisco,

in the heart of Silicon Valley.

No inner city problems here.

The average home price is almost a million dollars.

When you bought your house here, did you think the schools would be good?

Well, we did, yes, we did. And as I say, when we first moved in, they were.

What side of the periodic table are metals found on?

Now you're asking me?

I can't answer that, love, it's been too long.

I'd say the top side, but I don't know.

There is no top side. "On the periodic table,

metals are found generally on the left side. True."

Emily Jones is in the eighth grade at Roy Cloud Middle School.

Now be a good girl.

What's that mean? The bosses don't know their employees?

- Emily? - 'Cause back in the old days

when people had small businesses,

there were only like five or six people working,

but in the factories, they had hundreds and hundreds of people

working, and they barely knew, like, their names.

Very good.

What's your favorite subject?

I'm not very good at math, but I think I'd say it's my favorite subject.

Math and science.

I don't know what college I want to go to,

but I know I wanna be a teacher.

Woodside High, where Emily is slated to go next year,

looks like a private boarding school,

and Newsweek ranked it in the top six percent of American high stchoolst,

but Emily and her family wanna go somewhere else.

Summit Prep is located in an industrial neighborhood.

It doesn't have the fancy facilities of Woodside.

It doesn't even have a gymnasium.

But over 400 families are entering the lottery here

and hoping for a spot because of something else it doesn't have.

They all take the same courses through their four yearst,

which means we don't have tracking, so...

...yeah, so we don't track the students.

So the school over there tracks and you don't. Why?

Because we think every kid should be able to get to the highest level of

curriculum, so we want to hold them all to the same high standard.

Emily's probably not gonna drop out,

and it's very unlikely she'll go to prison,

but her test scores are low, which means the stakes for her next year are high.

Many families and their children are unaware

that their academic future will be decided by a school official

who will place them on a track.

Tracking is often determined by test results,

but research shows that students are also tracked

by arbitrary or subjective factors like neatness,

politenestst and obedience to authority.

Lower tracks have lower expectations, and often worse teachers.

So students placed on lower tracks often find they are running fast,

but falling behind.

As the years progress, it becomes increasingly difficult

for those kids to ever catch up.

The high-performing kids, they often have

special programs where they come through pretty well.

A lot of the kids who get hurt are the ones in the middle.

Eighty-seven years before...

Middle class schools suffer from the same

dysfunction as urban schools,

but because they attract more high-performing students,

their test scores are inflated.

It averages out to a point where it masks the bottom

75 percent of students in those schools.

The California State Universtity system

is designed to accept the top one-third of high school graduates,

but most are not prepared.

They have to remediate 50 to 60 percent of all incoming freshmen

before they can take college level classes.

Look at Woodside High School. Out of 1 00 ninth graderst,

62 will graduate and only 32 will be prepared for a four-year college.

But at Summit Prep, out of a hundred students,

96 will graduate,

and all of them will be ready for a four-year college.

To LA. We're going to LA. You remember we're going...

Emily and her family have signed up for the Summit lottery.

The computer just randomizes the numbers in an order.

Say 54-A is like the 99th student to get into Summit,

then they have a list of all the numbers who aren't

gonna get in but who are on the waiting list.

- Was it 300... or 400 spots? - Five hundred.

- For a hundred spots? - Five in one chance.

- Well, we'll see. - Yeah.

It's not like Woodside High School is so bad.

Many families would be happy to send their kids there.

In fact, Woodside is doing the job it was designed for, 50 yearst ago.

The system of tracking fit the demands of the time.

Only 20 percent of high school graduates

were even expected to go to college.

They would become doctors, lawyerst and CEOs.

The next 20 percent were meant to go straight into skilled jobs,

like accountants, managers and bureaucrats.

And the bottom 60 percent would become workers,

like farmerst and factory workerst.

There were jobs for everyone in the booming post-war economy,

and schools like Woodside did their part to supply a useful workforce.

The problem is our schools haven't changed,

but the world around them has.

Nowadays, you don't go to college, you're kind of screwed in America,

you know, and America's kind of screwed.

At the end of 2009, the unemployment rate was almost ten percent,

but the high-tech industry could not find enough

qualified people to fill theirjobs.

Instead, they had to go halfway around the world to recruit

the engineers and programmers they needed.

The only really proven thing to make an economy work well

is to have a well-educated workforce.

You know, people get panicked about the economic success of this country.

Well, there's one thing that will determine that.

Bill Gates was so worried about the state of our schools,

he testified before Congress.

We cannot sustain an economy based on innovation

unless we have citizens well-educated in math,

science and engineering. If we fail at this,

we won't be able to compete in the global economy.

We're not just lacking graduates in math and science.

By the year 2020, 1 23 million American jobs

will be high skill, high pay,

but only 50 million Americans will be qualified to fill them.

How strong the country is 20 years from now

and how equitable the country is 20 years from now

will be largely driven by this issue.

My parents actually tell me I have to read 30 minutes

and then I could go outside and play.

Go get it, go get it.

Has your mom and dad told you about the lottery?

No.

The lottery? Isn't that when people play and they win money?

Daisy and her parents have found one other option.

Eighth graders at KIPP LA Prep get triple the classroom time

in math and science,

and by the time they finish eighth grade,

they will have doubled their math and reading scores.

You can see the trees. You can see a building, a pole.

Judith and Jose have decided to enter Daisy into the KIPP lottery.

KIPP is a better school that they won't let you fail.

- They won't let you fail? - No.

Good morning.

Mom! Everybody's going to school now!

- I know. - I'm not graduating.

No, you're graduating. You just won't be at the ceremony.

When am I gonna graduate?

Nakia's hours have been cut back at work,

and she has had trouble making her monthly payments to Bianca's school.

Today is her graduation,

and she's not allowed to go

because I do owe some tuition,

and they will not allow her to go to the ceremonies.

And...

It's enough that I have to explain it to her,

but...

And I spoke to the principal about this

and I asked him, why penalize her for my responsibility?

I can understand them not giving her her certificate

or not giving her her report card,

but to not let her be a part of the ceremony

is just... it's harsh.

The Catholic schools, the scholarships

are very limited or they're already used up.

They just said, then try again for next year.

I said, "Mommy wanted you to stay in your school,"

and she finished my sentence, she said,

"I know, but you didn't have enough money."

I said, "That's right." I said, "But that was Mommy's choice

to put you in that school, and it's gonna be Mommy's job

to get you another school that's better."

Nakia is entering Bianca into the lottery at Harlem Success.

I'm very nervous.

We're gonna go over

and we're gonna keep our fingerst crossed and hope that we get called.

When Geoffrey Canada opened the doors to his new charter,

he saw kids that were two and three grade levels behind,

and they brought with them other problems

that middle class students didn't have:

poverty, crime, troubled homes.

In his neighborhood,

more kids knew people who had been to prison

than had gone to college.

For decades, tests have shown an achievement gap

between rich and poor children, and that over time,

despite everything we've tried,

nothing seems to make it any better.

Even progressive educators

began to believe that the gap could never be closed.

And for those of us who drive by these schools,

maybe we make the same dark assumption,

that those kids, the ones in the poorest neighborhoods,

just can't learn.

One-eight-seven.

In 1 947, many felt that the sound barrier could never be broken.

Even men of science believed that our fastest planes

would break apart when they approached the speed of sound.

The glass would shatter and the metal would shred.

It was a belief that kept many a pilot on the ground

and science from moving forward, until Chuck Yeager.

About half of the engineerst gave us no chance at all

of ever successfully flying beyond the speed of sound.

They said it's a so-called barrier, and the airplane

would, you know, go out of control or disintegrate.

I didn't look at it that way.

Almost everybody who comes in to do school,

they come in and try to save kids after they're lost.

Having seen firstthand the failures of reformers before him,

Geoffrey Canada knew he had to rethink the way a school worked

in a troubled neighborhood.

At the same time in Houston, David Levin and Mike Feinberg

were two frustrated teachers looking for another way.

Across the hall from Levin was a veteran teacher named Harriet Ball.

Break it down and show me how you choose for these other measures

How do you choose for these other measures? Like the liter.

She noticed that her kids had trouble learning math terms,

but could memorize a rap song.

It doesn't matter how heavy it is

So she turned her multiplication tables into a song.

I'm a mathbook that I left on the...

She called them "disposable crutches," and she said,

"Once I have the basics in that way, in an enjoyable way,"

and the kids would sort of sing these songs out in the playground,

"then I can move to the next step."

For Levin and Feinberg, it was nothing short of a revelation.

Can you count by seven?

- Yes! - Let's do it.

Seven, 14, 21 ...

They studied Ball's methods,

and drew from other teaching practices,

and opened two new schools called KIPP Academy,

one in Houston and the other in the Bronx.

Against the advice of skeptics, Geoffrey Canada laid out an ambitious vision

for a school that would go far beyond what others had tried.

We said, "What if we never let our kids get behind?"

He created an educational pipeline, which started at birth...

Can I give you a flyer on The Baby College?

...following each child through every stage of their development,

whatever it took.

Eight, 16, 24, 32, 40.

Both KIPP and Canada used the same fundamentals.

They increased classroom hours,

held school on Saturdays and even in the summertime...

- Does everybody agree with that? - Yes.

...put relentless focus on achievement

with a singular emphasis on a pathway to college...

Could you hand me the dissecting needle, please?

Right from the start, there is a "No excuse."

"We expect you all to perform at high levels."

And everybody cares about this. Everybody.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come here, come here, come here, come here, come here.

What's up with this? It's a whole new look.

I'm going to gym.

That scientists have discovered you can avoid...

...and the results have been staggering.

The top charter schools are sending over 90 percent of their kids

to four-year colleges, because when you get the culture right,

and the teachers are helping each other out,

and that long school day means that that is the primary thing

that student is engaged in, it works.

KIPP Academy has been named

the highest-performing middle school in the entire Bronx.

Congratulations, Kippsters.

- Austin! - Texas!

But the experts refused to accept

that this was anything more than a few charismatic leaders,

an idea that could never be repeated or brought to scale.

Sixteen yearst later, there are 82 KIPP schools

across the country, each in low-income,

under-performing neighborhoods, including KIPP LA Prep,

where Daisy is applying.

You can't beat their data.

We have now data from the first thousand kids

who have gone through four years of KIPP.

Those kids have gone from the 32nd to the 60th percentile in reading,

and from the 40th to the 82nd percentile in math.

We have never had those kinds of gains for low-income kids.

I want somebody to come up and draw three quarters for me.

In Geoffrey Canada's program, there are 8,000 students.

In a neighborhood where less

than one out of ten residents have a college degree,

nine out of ten are proficient in math

and are on track to go to a four-year college.

Twenty-five years ago, there was no proof that something else worked.

Well, now we know what works.

We know that it's just a lie that... that disadvantaged kids can't learn.

We know that if you apply the right accountability standards,

you can get fabulous results.

So why would we do something else?

Brilliant. What, you could be one of my teachers.

When you finish, and you get your college degree, come work for me.

You can help us teach math, all right?

The students at KIPP and Geoffrey Canada's schools

don't just do better than other poor kids.

They do better than everyone, closing the achievement gap

and shattering the myth that those kids can't learn.

Anthony's class visits the SEED School,

the firstt urban public boarding school in the country.

I'm sure a mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle,

grandparent, neighbor, someone has taken an interest in you

and someone loves you,

and they recognize the importance of education.

To come to SEED, geography and luck, that's it.

You have to live in the district, and we have

to pull out a bingo ball, call your number.

You can actually have posters on your side of the room.

- You can decorate however you want. - This is like a college.

Yes, this is like a college. This is exactly...

And so because you're in a boarding school, by the time

you get ready to go to college, you will already know what it's gonna be like.

If I get into SEED, I'm gonna have seven classes.

Gotta wake up early, usually,

and then you gotta wear ties and stuff.

No TV...

...no games, no nothing.

So you hoping you get in, or you hoping you don't get in?

It's bittersweet to me if I get in.

They give me a better chance in life, but if I don't,

I just be with my friends.

One, two...

Where are you? 'Sup with you?

In a way I want him to get in, buts another part of me

really don't want him to get in.

Why?

Because he'll be gone all that time, but I want him to go.

A part of me wants him to go.

What are the odds of getting in?

I don't know.

I wanna go to college and get an education.

Why?

Because I... if I have kids,

I don't want kids to be in this environment.

- What? - Like around here.

I mean, I want my kids to have better than what I had.

You're already thinking about your kids?

No, I'm just saying.

I wanna go to school.

After a short time, Michelle Rhee had made clear progress.

Test scores were up across the city,

and her broad powers allowed her to shift resources away

from the Central Office and into her schools.

For the first time in Washington, D.C. public schools,

we've ensured that every single school has an art teacher,

a music teacher, a PE teacher, a librarian and a nurse.

But when she tried more fundamental changes,

the kind she saw in successful charter schools,

the more she ran up against the system.

She couldn't extend the school day,

effectively evaluate her teacherst

or alter the terms of tenure.

So in the summer of 2008,

Rhee proposed a radical change in the way the D.C. school district

and the union had done business for almost a century.

How soon do you think you'll have a contract with the teachers?

- We're going to... - Within weeks? A couple of weeks?

We're going to present our final offer

in the next couple of weeks.

We are gonna change the face of public education in this country.

Instead of demanding the end of tenure,

Rhee made a proposal that would give teachers a choice.

Keep tenure and get a modest raise,

or give up tenure and earn potentially twice as much in merit pay.

Everyone says teachers don't get paid enough.

We're gonna pay teachers six-figure salaries.

Everybody has a choice in the matter.

It seemed that Rhee had come up with a magic formula

to solve the most intractable problem in all of education.

If she succeeded, it could open the way for even broader reforms.

Educators were watching closely, and, not surprisingly,

so was the National Teachers' Union.

What we're against is proposals that divide people,

and that undermine education.

The mentality is that they have a right to that job.

I believe that that mindset has to be completely flipped on its head,

and unless you can show that you're bringing positive results for kids,

then you cannot have the privilege of teaching in our schools

and teaching our children.

We ultimately wanna have the most highly effective

and highly compensated educator force in the country.

We wanna make sure that we recognize and reward our effective teachers,

and I think that this proposal will go a long way to doing that.

After months of highly charged debate,

the local union leadership found Rhee's proposal so threatening,

they would not even allow a vote.

Now I see in a lot more coherent ways

why things are the way they are.

It all becomes about the adults.

We've tried money...

...passing laws...

...and the latest reforms.

I want you to get a real good idea when you start to create your figures.

But the one thing those who work in the trenches know

is that you can't have a great school without great teachers.

How is it possible that all three of these rectangles have the same area?

When you see a great teacher, you are seeing a work of art.

You're seeing a master, and it is as, I think,

unbelievable as seeing a great athlete

- or seeing a great musician. - Add them all up.

What do we do to find the money?

Look past all the noise and the debate,

and it's easy to see.

Nothing will change without them.

What happens when a school fails a kid?

What happens over time?

Now that we know it's possible

to give every child a great education,

what is our obligation to other people's children?

Sometimes, I think it's easier to think of the millions of children

who are in our schools, and look at the numbers,

and all of the problems, scratch our heads,

throw up our hands and give up,

rather than look at just one...

"...to spike..."

...and ask ourselves,

"Did we do the right thing? Did we do enough?"

As long as she has the VGA, I'll just hook it up.

OK. We're done.

Sixth-grade males.

In column A here,

I've assigned every student a lottery ID number.

And you have a one-preference if you live in district

and a two-preference if you live out of district.

I looked at 400 random numbers compared to each other,

and ran it about a hundred times, and they never matched.

Go like this. Cross your fingers.

I got a good feeling about this.

Charter law, which allows these schools,

requires that if you have more applications for a grade in your school

than you have spaces available,

you must hold a random, public drawing...

We must conduct the lottery and it's a random selection.

You see the cages up here. It's a random selection.

You all have your numbers, right? OK.

OK, Daisy, let's go.

The spaces with the Xs is for all of the fifth-grade students

that are moving into the sixth grade for next year.

We're gonna start with the kindergartners

and first and second graders,

with some of the people on the wait list at the end.

Are you nervous? No? I am.

Come on, Daisy, cross your fingers.

Let's get started.

Twenty.

E-V-two-zero-one-five, accepted.

E-V-two-zero-four-four, accepted.

Fregoso, Andrew.

Cabrera, Alondra.

Imani Richardson. Arilay Rich.

Genia Miller.

Giselle Mitchell. Brittany Adams.

I'm so sad they didn't say me.

Ten.

Twenty-eight.

Damari Shineri. Antonio McCleary.

Daphne Alescas. Omarion Lawrence.

Pablo Blanco. Ronelle Laborio.

E-V-two-zero-zero-seven, accepted.

E-V-two-zero-zero-eight, accepted.

E-V-two-zero-zero-nine, accepted.

Lovon, Faigon.

Calderon, Michael.

Fammah Fatimata. Justin Marin.

Jamelle Fall. Muthar Diallo.

Gabriella Sanchez. Abrama Dione.

Jasmine Wenz. And Ishmael Sy.

- They didn't say me. - It's fine.

And our accepted second graders. Emmanuel...

- Oh, wow. - Tyrell Chapman.

EV-two-zero-two-one, accepted.

EV-two-zero-two-two, accepted.

We're gonna be in the next one.

- EV-two-zero-two-six, accepted. - You got it!

EV-two-zero-two-seven, accepted.

EV-two-one-six-nine

through EV-two-one-eight-two.

Sophia Rodriguez. Julia Flete.

Windsor Washington. Matthew Algarvo.

Edrisa Cohen. Jada Carson.

Soliz, Juan.

Delacruz, Yesenia.

Serrano, Joseph.

Barrajas, Augustine.

Sean Corazaca.

Fanta Cesa.

Mohammed Ambi. Becar Berry.

Buvicar Turay.

Hazeline Gonzalez.

Welcome to Harlem Success Academy Two!

Welcome, all scholars. We are so excited to meet you.

Nine.

Twelve.

Eighteen.

Twenty-two.

The remaining numbers will be on our waiting list.

Sixteen.

Thirteen.

Twenty-seven.

Three.

Thank you to all of you for being here.

Give yourselves a round of applause. Thank you.

For families who are on the waiting list, you should receive at some time

the early part of next week, confirming where you are on the waiting list.

And here we go, our final five.

Students, thank you. Parents...

We are really excited to serve your children.

And here they come, our last group.

What can I say?

Yeah. I won't give up on my kids.

OK.

Don't cry. You gonna make Mommy cry. OK?

I told Francisco, Mommy's trying to get you

into a good school, a better school.

It was much easier for me,

knowing that if he didn't get in,

for him not to be here,

'cause then, on my way home,

I could get my thoughts together.

There are just so many different parents out there

that want so much for their children.

We know we have the tools to save those kids.

People are doing it every day, right now.

You know, the status quo can be changed, but it takes a lot of outrage

and a lot of good examples,

leading people to say yes, we can do this.

We can show that this is different.

The question is, do we have the fortitude

that it would take as a city and as a country

to make the difficult decisions that would be necessary?

If we give up, then what is the result?

What is the result?

Superman!

The children are all right, Miss Lane.

- Just a little shaken up. - Oh, thank goodness.

- And Wagner? What about him? - See for yourstelf.

Someone destroyed his ability to think.

I would love to say it's all fixed,

and everybody says, "Oh, great, great, we believe now."

No. It is every day, you are back in the struggle,

saying to these kids, "Don't give up,"

so kids believe again that education is a way out.

Hello. Yes, ma'am, he is. Hold on.

Hello.

- Hello. Is this Anthony? - Yes.

Hi, Anthony. It's Mrs. Inman

from the SEED Public Charter School. How are you?

- Fine. - You're fine?

What did you think about the lottery?

It was OK, but it could've been better if I would've got in.

I'm actually calling with some good news.

So we reconciled all of our numbers,

and we were able to move students up to be enrolled,

and I was so excited to see your name.

We have a space for you.

Thank you.

- How's it going? - Fine.

- Good. How was your summer? - Good.

Good? If I can just get you to sign in, ma'am.

- I need to sign him in? - Yes, ma'am.

- You just sign right by his name there. - Just give me a second.

How you doing? Mr. Bagley, your life skills counselor.

Mr. Michaels. Life skills counselor. So how are you guys doing?

- Hi. Fine. How are you? - In here, sir.

You're the first one, so you can choose what you want, one of the three beds.

I want this one.

No, I want that one.

- Love you. - Me too.