The education mode in America is working swell, says Bob Bowdon, however simply for some -- and those few surely aren't the students. In his docudrama "The Cartel," New Jersey television news reporter Bowdon shines a light on the putrefaction and greed that has resulted in the disappearing of so much taxpayer money in that state. When $400,000 is exhausted per classroom, but reading proficiency is only 39% (and math at 40%), the crisis is unmistakable, which doesn't mean it's not controversial.
On the one aspect is the massive Jersey teachers union and shady school officials, who ensure that, as Bowdon points out in his film, 90 cents of every tax dollar go for other expenses, including six figure incomes for school administrators and, in a shocking example, a school board secretary who makes $180,000. On the other side are the supporters of charter schools -- private schools which can work beyond the authority of what Bowdon calls The Cartel. In those impoverished public schools, Bowdon points out, it's pretty much unimaginable to fire an instructor -- so even a substandard one has a job for life.
"'The Cartel' examines lots of different aspects of public education, tenure, funding, patronage drops, corruption --meaning larceny -- vouchers and charter schools," says Bowdon. "And as such it sort of serves as a swift-moving primer on all of the red-hot topics inside the education-reform drive."
"The Cartel" first appeared on the festival circuit in summer 2009, appearing in theaters countrywide a year later. It consequently proceeds the more-recently released, while higher profile, education docudrama "Waiting for Superman," directed by Davis Guggenheim ("An Inconvenient Truth"). Bowdon sees the two documentaries as taking different approaches to the identical dilemma, "The Cartel" by examining public policy and "Superman" centering on the human-interest aspects. "The two films reach equivalent conclusions," Bowdon says.
The left-brained approach means arguments that follow the economics -- money misspent, opportunities wasted. He follows the money to represent conclusions about how crooked the Jersey school system is, but his picture features moments of great emotion and heartbreak. One girl, crying after discovering she wasn't selected in a lottery for a charter school, tells the story of What Went Wrong as well as Bowdon's arguments.
And though there's an irony in this form of public depravity happening in a state famed for its organized crime, it's obvious that this is not an isolated collapse. Any watcher will realize the failings of their own state's education system and the battle for control. Bowdon comes out in favor of the charter school plan, of taxpayers being able to select their own schools, to get out from under the state's control. 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. - 40725
On the one aspect is the massive Jersey teachers union and shady school officials, who ensure that, as Bowdon points out in his film, 90 cents of every tax dollar go for other expenses, including six figure incomes for school administrators and, in a shocking example, a school board secretary who makes $180,000. On the other side are the supporters of charter schools -- private schools which can work beyond the authority of what Bowdon calls The Cartel. In those impoverished public schools, Bowdon points out, it's pretty much unimaginable to fire an instructor -- so even a substandard one has a job for life.
"'The Cartel' examines lots of different aspects of public education, tenure, funding, patronage drops, corruption --meaning larceny -- vouchers and charter schools," says Bowdon. "And as such it sort of serves as a swift-moving primer on all of the red-hot topics inside the education-reform drive."
"The Cartel" first appeared on the festival circuit in summer 2009, appearing in theaters countrywide a year later. It consequently proceeds the more-recently released, while higher profile, education docudrama "Waiting for Superman," directed by Davis Guggenheim ("An Inconvenient Truth"). Bowdon sees the two documentaries as taking different approaches to the identical dilemma, "The Cartel" by examining public policy and "Superman" centering on the human-interest aspects. "The two films reach equivalent conclusions," Bowdon says.
The left-brained approach means arguments that follow the economics -- money misspent, opportunities wasted. He follows the money to represent conclusions about how crooked the Jersey school system is, but his picture features moments of great emotion and heartbreak. One girl, crying after discovering she wasn't selected in a lottery for a charter school, tells the story of What Went Wrong as well as Bowdon's arguments.
And though there's an irony in this form of public depravity happening in a state famed for its organized crime, it's obvious that this is not an isolated collapse. Any watcher will realize the failings of their own state's education system and the battle for control. Bowdon comes out in favor of the charter school plan, of taxpayers being able to select their own schools, to get out from under the state's control. 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. - 40725
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