Among 30 developed countries U.S. students rank 25th in math and 21st in science. In poverty stricken area’s of our own country the drop out rate is 60% and children in these area’s will know more people that have gone to prison then have gone to college. To make matters worse the heart of our schools, the teachers, have become so heavily guarded by unions that they can choose to sleep through class without consequence. Some do. Waiting For “Superman” takes a look at the numbers and talks with a wide variety of people from educators to politicians while following the lives of a few children and their parents, all looking to find the right setting for education. Directed by Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) this documentary will frustrate you, frighten you, but in the end give you hope that things can change for the better and for our children.

It’s no big secret that our countries education system has been broken for a very long time. Over the years its been blamed on the attitude of our children, the lack of responsibility and accountability of the teachers, the squabbling of the politicians, not over who has the best answer for this problem, but where to place the blame. There’s probably an infinite combination of problems that can be addressed that are sure stoppers in our children getting the kind of education that would benefit our society in the future. Waiting For “Superman” doesn’t focus on the hypothetical conundrums of tracking all these problems but rather crunches the numbers to show us where were failing, how were failing, and why were failing.

Like any documentary you have to assume that any facts that you may obtain are probably half truths that need looking into. Oddly enough this may be exactly what Waiting For “Superman” and its creators want you to do. For example can it be true that in Pittsburgh for the same cost as housing an inmate in prison you could take that money and educate the same person K-12 in a private school and still have $24,000 left over for a college education and that a majority percentage of drop outs end up in prison? How about in New York teachers being disciplined for anything from excessive tardiness to sexual abuse are sent to wait for their reprimanding to a room entitled “The Rubber Room”. Here the teachers will receive their paycheck and all that applies even though they aren’t even working and that it could take up to three years. Every year it costs the state of New York one hundred million. This cycle is all thanks to the corruption of tenure and an aggressive teachers union that would help set rules that a failing teacher gets paid the same salary as one that produces 100% results in their classroom. There is an overwhelming amount of eye opening revelations in this documentary and regardless of how you have to take them with a grain of salt until you do your own personal research there is enough information here to shock you. What's most moving is the way in which Guggenheim puts you in the lives of the children and their parents in the documentary showing the promise of the kids, the failings of the school’s they're in, and the hopes of their dreams riding on a gambling chance they will gain acceptance into one of the more prominent charter schools in their area. It runs a little long in some instances but definitely a documentary that should be seen if not simply for the information on why schools are failing in hopes that it will inspire action.