Whatever Happened To ‘The Waiting For Superman’ Kids?
The PR of education reform focuses on the feel-good, beating the odds, stories about heroic teachers and and rock-star superintendents who never give up on their students.
There are the 106 original graduates of Chicago’s Urban Prep Charter school that Arne Duncan saved by shutting down the failing school that they would have attended if not for his policies. There is the boy whose Memphis Teach For America teacher taught him rugby — his ticket to college which got the boy featured in an ESPN documentary and got the TFA teacher on Forbes’ 30 under 30 list. And there are the four inner-city kids who were featured in ‘Waiting For Superman’ — Anthony Black, Daisy Esparza, Bianca Hill, and Francisco Regalado. After ‘Waiting For Superman’ came out, they were even invited to The White House.
But what happens to these kids after they have served their purpose as PR pawns for education reformers?
For the most part, we don’t know.
Urban Prep had promised that they were going to publish their 6-year college graduation rate for that first class. They were supposed to do that, but never did, to the best of my knowledge. Recently one of the three Urban Prep campuses has been put on the school CONTINUE READING: Whatever Happened To ‘The Waiting For Superman’ Kids? | Gary Rubinstein's Blog