Waiting for Superman Screening Set for Sept. 15

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Waiting for Superman, an award-winning documentary examining the crisis of public education in America, will be screened Sept. 15 on the University of Arkansas campus as part of this year's lecture series presented by the department of education reform. A panel discussion will follow.

Davis Guggenheim, who also directed An Inconvenient Truth, takes a comprehensive look at the nation's education system and its failings in Waiting for Superman, while telling the stories of five families who are determined to give their children a chance at academic success. In the process, Guggenheim takes on the issues of teachers' unions, entrenched school bureaucracies and the controversial promise of public charter schools.

After the screening, which begins at 6 p.m. in the Union Theater at the Arkansas Union, education experts Howard Fuller and Christopher Heller will debate education reform issues. Reed Greenwood, former dean of the College of Education and Health Professions, will moderate the discussion.

"Waiting for Superman has sparked a national discussion about education reform," said Jay P. Greene, head of the department of education reform and holder of an endowed chair. "We wanted to continue that discussion in Arkansas by bringing Howard Fuller and Chris Heller together to share their different perspectives as we screen the movie."

Fuller holds the rank of Distinguished Professor of education and is director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University. He was formerly superintendent of schools in Milwaukee and chaired the Charter School Review Committee for the city of Milwaukee.

Fuller, co-founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, has long been recognized as a pioneer in education reform and is one of the nation’s leading advocates for providing low-income children with educational options.

Heller, an attorney with the Friday, Eldredge and Clark firm in Little Rock, works primarily in the area of education law. As attorney for the Little Rock School District, Heller has challenged the legality of charter schools in central Arkansas.

This is the sixth year for the lecture series. RSVP online for the lectures. A light lunch will be served. With the exception of the film screening, all of the future lectures in this academic year's program are scheduled to begin at noon in Room 343 of the Graduate Education Building. The lecture series webpage also includes links to work by the presenters.

Other dates, presenters and topic information:

• Sept. 9, William Fischel, professor of economics and Hardy Professor of Legal Studies at Dartmouth College. Fischel's lecture, "Will I See You in September? Why the Standard School Calendar Makes Education Reform Difficult and the Economy More Productive," is taken from a paper Fischel published in 2005 in the Journal of Urban Economics.  

• Sept. 23, Perry Zirkel, professor of education and law at LeHigh University. He will discuss his expertise in special education law with a lecture titled "School Lore v. School Law: Prevailing Beliefs and Objective Knowledge."

• Sept. 30, Chip Paucek, chief operating officer and president of 2tor, a company that partners with institutions of higher education to deliver "rigorous, selective degree programs online to students globally."

• Oct. 21, Brian Jacob, the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. In recent work, he has examined school choice, education accountability programs and teacher labor markets.

• Oct. 28, Tim Sass, the Charles and Joan Haworth Professor of Labor Economics at Florida State University and research associate with the Urban Institute's Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. His lecture is titled "Teacher Preparation Programs: Do They Produce Superior Teachers and Are Some Programs Better than Others?"

• Nov. 18, Matt Ladner, senior adviser of policy and research for the Foundation for Excellence in Education. His lecture is titled "Friedman and Rawls: A Path to Bipartisan K-12 Reform."

• Dec. 2, Elizabeth Dhuey, assistant professor at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto. Her lecture is titled "School Entry Policies and Their Effect on Academic and Labour Market Outcomes."

• Jan. 20, Jack Buckley, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics in the U.S. Department of Education and associate professor of applied statistics in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University.

• Jan. 27, Ron Zimmer, associate professor of public policy and education in the Peabody College at Vanderbilt University. His research focuses on school choice and school finance, and he serves as associate editor of Economics of Education Review.

• Feb. 3, Steve Glazerman, a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research. His expertise is in methods for evaluating the impact of social programs and in teacher labor markets, including issues of teacher recruitment, professional development, alternative certification, performance measurement and compensation.

• Feb. 10, Matthew M. Chingos, a fellow at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution and postdoctoral fellow at the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University.

• March 2, Dan Goldhaber, research professor at the University of Washington, where he directs the Center for Education Data & Research. His lecture is titled "Managing the Teacher Workforce in Austere Times."

• April 20, Susan M. Dynarski, associate professor of education and public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Dynarski’s research focuses on charter schools, demand for private schooling, historical trends in inequality in educational attainment and the optimal design of financial aid.

• April 27, Marguerite Roza, senior data and economic advisor in the U.S. Program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Her research work includes education finance and the effects that fiscal policies at the federal, state and district levels have on resources in classrooms and schools, as well as the direct impact that education policies have on education budgets and spending inside schools and within districts. 

• May 12, Rod Paige, former U.S. Secretary of Education, will speak at the commencement exercises of the College of Education and Health Professions at Bud Walton Arena. The department of education reform sponsored his appearance.