Last night Reason Foundation had a screening of Madeleine Sackler's documentary The Lottery. The film follows a few families as their children apply to Harlem Success Academy, a charter school which can only accept a minority of its applicants.
Heartbreaking is watching the lottery results being read publicly. You see the small faces of those children of those not accepted fall as they realize that they failed to get in.
Worse is the comments from politicians and union representatives as they try to hinder the charter school's efforts to better educate poor children.
Eva Moskowitz, Harlem Success Academy's founder describes to a city counsel panel how the schools in Harlem were failing back when she was growing up and haven't gotten better in 35 years. The kids not testing at grade level ranges across schools but can be as low as 20%.
The panel that followed highlighted some exceptional people who are making an impact on educating in the United States. Reason's Lisa Snell moderated the panel. It included Richard Riordan, Frank Baxter, Ben Austin and Larry Sand.
I recommend the move to all and urge you to forward it on.
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