Michelle Rhee: The Failing School System

The filmmakers purpose was to show people what was happening in the school system, and the failing schools and not so great neighborhoods. It showed charter schools, and how they were doing better than public schools.The claims in this film that are made is that the schools are getting more stupider or they aren't doing what they are supposed to. They showed statistics on different schools and states, Different kids and their home situations. The thesis of the film was to see how different schools, states, and countries school system worked and what we could do to change the ones that were failing. The claims that were made were that school systems were failing and it was time to change the system. In the film Michelle Rhee, who was the superintendent of the Washington D.C. public schools and she wanted to change how public schools worth ethic was and the way they ran the schools. In the film it shows validation when they show statistics on different states, countries, and schools and compare them to each other and how they showed the percentage of students that graduate and don’t graduate, which was a wide margin between each other. There were
a lot of states that had statistics that were drastically different from each other, some were good, some were bad. Most states in the U.S. had good school districts, then they’re ones that have dreadful results of their school systems.
The attitude or viewpoint of the filmmaker is frustration, annoyance by the government, school system, and the employees that don’t do their job.
The tone of the film I say it would be is judgemental on the school systems, government, and bad employees. They showed a lot of emotion towards what was happening and why they should help fix the issue. One mom was annoyed by the fact that her child’s teachers weren’t helping him read and send home his homework, she called multiple times to one of the teachers to make a conference to see how her child was performing in class and the teacher never called her back, one of the other teachers suggested to go to the school board and tell them about it, and they suggested a charter school and her and her child had to wait and to do a lottery to be entered into the school to get
in.
The cinematic techniques they use is they show interviews with the kids and their parents on how they are performing in school and what subjects they like or dislike. They show different neighborhoods and what the climate is like there. At one point they show a former student driving and showing their old school and how he thinks the school system is like and what was his school like. He said he didn’t think it was the teachers or the school systems fault, it was the neighborhoods fault.
The structure of the film help achieve it’s purpose because it shows evidence, statistics, actual proof of the evidence and the claim. They show different things throughout the film that back up the purpose of the film and why what they were showing wasn’t working.