Davis Guggenheim directed "Waiting For Superman" because "I couldn’t get past this feeling of driving my kids past three public schools on the way to their private school." Nothing had improved in the decade since his documentary, PBS’s "
The First Year," so Guggenheim used "the conceit" of a lottery dooming some kids to schools of "barbaric cruelty." "No policy can do what Guggenheim has done (in "The First Year"); illuminate the deeply emotional bonds the best teachers form with students." "It cuts through the rhetoric of the national debate ... to remind us what is real: the powerful relationship between a teacher and a student." He did not address "the merits of countless school debates," how NCLB killed progress, and how a hero of his new movie, Michelle Rhee, has poisoned those relationships by turning children into test scores.
"The First Year" documents a system trying to cut services for English Languages Learners, that defines
