The lottery was very hard to sit down and watch for me as an African American and someone that is striving for higher education. The truth behind the documentary is something that we as American’s try to put on the back burner. Education is the most important key to success in America. So I find it very hard that state funded schools with a major majority of their students being low income, graduate with not being able to read. I feel like this is a very often occurrence a lot of the low income students just slip through the crack’s because no one has established an equal opportunity for them to succeed.
Trying to bridge the achievement gap is a goal that everyone would love to see happen but nothing is ever as simple as it sounds. The charter schools make a very strong argument that they are a first step to bridging the gap. I like the idea of creating more charter schools because the stats on most are more than satisfying. I believe that if a public school like the one shown in the movie is not preforming as expected then they should be shut down and turned into a charter school. It’s silly to keep an under-performing school to keep operating knowing that kids just go along not grasping simple fundamentals. America has always seen that innovation is a great thing and helps us advance so why not convert more schools into charter schools and see where it takes us.
On the other side of things I do not like the fact of having lottery drawings to choose which students can go to that charter school. I feel as if every child should be able to go to a charter school if they want to. If the problem is not enough space then they should be able to take over a low preforming bigger school. The main point is that the students will benefit from this change and be able to receive a better education. But this also goes back to another point if there were more charter schools they would not be an issue of not having enough room for children and it would eliminate the drawings.
I think that the days of a traditional school are on the verge of not existing anymore with the pressure of competing with other countries it’s almost certain that we have to do something about educating the youth. This means that the attention needs to be more focused on allowing educational growth for all children not just the rich and the one that can afford to send their kids to better schools. We have been through educational reforms in the past with the same concepts and tricks so why not give charter schools a chance to help our students achieve more than they would in a regular traditional school.
When reviewing this movie there was not a very strong argument to keep traditional schools around. Nothing stuck out to me that we should keep traditional schools around all I heard was that it was unfair to the parents which I don’t believe. The parents should want the best for their child. If that means letting a charter school come into your old school so be it that could start something much more important than your selfish wants. One of the parents said we should give the low preforming schools a chance to straighten up get it together but as we all know it is only a very few schools that have actually done that. And when they did change things around it took more than a year or two so by that time you have kids missing most of what they need to learn to help them reach higher education.
Johnathon W.G.Williams I
¡The Rise! 