Hating ‘Superman’

The new film “Waiting for ‘Superman'” is getting good reviews for its portrayal of children seeking alternatives to dreadful public schools, and to judge by the film’s opponents it is having an impact.

Witness the scene on a recent Friday night in front of a Loews multiplex in New York City, where some 50 protestors blasted the film as propaganda for charter schools. “Klein, Rhee and Duncan better switch us jobs, so we can put an end to those hedge fund hogs,” went one of their anti-charter cheers, referring to school reform chancellors Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The odd complaint is that donors to charter schools include some hedge fund managers.

Or maybe not so odd. Teachers unions and the public school monopoly have long benefitted from wielding a moral trump card. They claimed to care for children, and caring was defined solely by how much taxpayers spent on schools.

That moral claim is being turned on its head as more Americans come to understand that teachers unions and the public bureaucracy are the main obstacles to reform. Movies such as “Waiting for ‘Superman'” and “The Lottery” are exposing this to the larger American public, leaving the monopolists to the hapless recourse of suggesting that reformers are merely the tools of hedge fund philanthropists.

The Manhattan protest was sponsored by the Grassroots Education Movement, which was co-founded by Norman Scott, a retired public school teacher. Mr. Scott says the group has nothing to do with the United Federation of Teachers, and that it’s comprised of New York City teachers and parents who have been “adversely affected by charter schools.” Mr. Scott told us he and several others are developing their own film, “The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for ‘Superman.'” That’s a nod to Davis Guggenheim, who directed Al Gore’s climate change documentary before he did “Superman.”

We saw a trailer for this anti-“Superman” film, which denounces most of the leading advocates for charter schools. The irony is that most of those criticized are Democrats or noted liberals who’ve been mugged by public school reality.

Though the protestors were the main spectacle that day outside the theater, two others in the crowd provided a counterpoint. Charter school parent Daniel Clark Sr. and his son Daniel Jr., a ninth grader at Democracy Prep, came down from Harlem. “The reason there’s such a gravitational pull” to such schools, Mr. Clark says of parents in poor neighborhoods, “is not because they love charter schools. It’s because they’re the only game in town.”

Mr. Clark thinks “Waiting for ‘Superman'” is helping people get it. “There’s a lack of information in general about the charter schools . . . the movie puts it in personal terms. You can see the kids, you can see the anxiety in the families.” He describes his son as “a typical kid on 133rd street. The only difference is that he got lucky enough to get into a charter school. . . . God knows where he would be if he was at the public school he was meant to go to.”

The waiting list in Harlem to attend a charter is more than 11,000 and nationwide it is an estimated 420,000. The teachers unions continue to wield enough power to deny choices to these students, but their days as political supermen are numbered.