Video: Daily Show Interview with "Brooklyn Castle" filmmaker and student
See the video clip below last night from Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, with Katie Dellamaggiore, the maker of the inspirational film "Brooklyn Castle," about IS 318 in Brooklyn and its champion chess team, and Pobo Efekoro, a former member of the team. This film, which has now opened around the country is an absolute must-see. The villains are not those as in the usual Hollywood propaganda films (teachers and their unions as in"Won't Back Down" and "Waiting for Superman" ) but reflect reality on the ground: the repeated mid-year budget cuts carried out by the Bloomberg/Klein administration that threaten the ability of the chess team to defend their championship.
Also briefly discussed during the interview with Jon Stewart below is the wrongheaded obsession with testing, how unfair it is to target and demonize teachers, the unreliable teacher evaluation system based on test scores, and school overcrowding at Forest Hills HS, the school that Pobo currently attends, which enrolls nearly twice as many students as it was built for. For more on the ridiculously low ratings of IS 318 in DOE's progress
Also briefly discussed during the interview with Jon Stewart below is the wrongheaded obsession with testing, how unfair it is to target and demonize teachers, the unreliable teacher evaluation system based on test scores, and school overcrowding at Forest Hills HS, the school that Pobo currently attends, which enrolls nearly twice as many students as it was built for. For more on the ridiculously low ratings of IS 318 in DOE's progress