Diane Ravitch,

writing for the New York Review of Books, one of the best places to read social criticism or essays, levels much criticism over the overhyped charter schools and the movies like The Cartel and Waiting for Superman, which promote them by lying about charters and about public education.

As an aside, I am now seeing propaganda being spread about Albert Shanker, the late head of the AFT, who was the one who came up with the idea of charters. The newest lie is since he came up with the idea, that this means unions weren't initially hostile to them. However, Shanker repudiated charters later on when he found out corporations and privatizers were exploiting the notion of charters in order to gut public schools and funnel public money into what are really private schools. Instead of peddling vouchers for private and religious schools, the new scheme was to funnel public money into what are really private schools and thus do an end run around court decisions and elections outlawing vouchers. You very seldom hear about vouchers anymore.

Diane Ravitch:

The propagandistic nature of Waiting for “Superman” is revealed by Guggenheim’s complete indifference to the wide variation among charter schools. There are excellent charter schools, just as there are excellent public schools. Why did he not also inquire into the charter chains that are mired in unsavory real estate deals, or take his camera to the charters where most students are getting lower scores than those in the neighborhood public schools? Why did he not report on the charter principals who have been indicted for embezzlement, or the charters that blur the line between church and state? Why did he not look into the charter schools whose leaders are paid $300,000–$400,000 a year to oversee small numbers of schools and students?

Guggenheim seems to believe that teachers alone can overcome the effects of student poverty, even though there are countless studies that demonstrate the link between income and test scores. He shows us footage of the pilot Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier, to the amazement of people who said it couldn’t be done. Since Yeager broke the sound barrier, we should be prepared to believe that able teachers are all it takes to overcome the disadvantages of poverty, homelessness, joblessness, poor nutrition, absent parents, etc.

Why do you need the right when you have so-called "Democrats" promoting right-wing, anti-democratic notions such as destroying public education?