Participant Media Films

Despite increased spending and politicians’ promises, our buckling public-education system, once the best in the world, routinely forsakes the education of millions of children. Oscar-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (‘An Inconvenient Truth’) reminds us that education ‘statistics’ have names: Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily, whose stories make up the engrossing foundation of Waiting for ‘Superman’. As he follows a handful of promising kids through a system that inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth, Guggenheim undertakes an exhaustive review of public education, surveying ‘drop-out factories’ and ‘academic sinkholes,’ methodically dissecting the system and its seemingly intractable problems.