Firing teachers, attacking unions

When the acclaimed and controversial U.S. public school documentary Waiting for Superman came out last fall, one of its most talked-about subjects was Washington D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. Waiting for Superman is director Davis Guggenheim’s (also of An Inconvenient Truth fame) dissection of what’s wrong with America’s public school system. Immobile bureaucracies and teacher unions take it on the chin. Certain charter schools geared towards poor, inner-city kids are heroes. At the time the movie was shot, Rhee was still chancellor. She had been brought in by D.C. Democrat mayor Adrian Fenty in 2007 to shake the system up...