Superman’s Emily states her case
More opportunities for her at charter high
Emily Jones was speaking only for herself. She and her mother, Ann, made that clear.
Emily, now a sophomore at Summit Preparatory Charter High in Redwood City, was one of five students portrayed in Davis Guggenheim’s documentary Waiting for Superman. In my video interview of her, Emily explains why she so urgently wanted to attend Summit instead of Woodside High, her local high school. It’s a personal story, and she and her mother explain it well.
But Guggenheim went further, depicting Woodside as the archetypical high school of old – an assembly line where elites get on the college track and other students are funneled to easier, less ambitious courses that can lead maybe to community college, to work, or to nowhere if students drop out, which, according to the movie, a third of Woodside students do.
Waiting for Superman has Woodside High parents up in arms. They designed and hung a huge banner at the school: “Woodside High School Teachers – Man, You’re Super! Thank you for teaching ALL the students in our community!” The California Teachers Assn. did a press release about it, in which the organizing parent is quoted, “I wanted to do something. My children have great teachers at Woodside.”
In an op-ed in the San Mateo Daily Journal, Woodside High Principal David Reilly criticized the filmmakers for not even trying to contact the school for its side of the story and asserted that the graduation rate is 96 percent, not 68 percent. Based on its API score, Woodside got the highest ranking – 10 – compared with schools with similar demographics two years in a row (more on the data in a minute.)
Reilly pointed to the inequitable funding among K-8 feeder districts that send some students prepared for high school and others not, and the challenges facing comprehensive high schools serving “the disinterested and disenfranchised as well as the motivated and engaged.” He didn’t directly confront the tracking issue that Emily raised. But in an Oct. 1 e-mail to Sequoia Union High School District parents, Superintendent James Lianides did. This is what he wrote:
We know that, had Emily enrolled in any of our comprehensive high schools, she would have been registered in college preparatory classes meeting UC/CSU A-G requirements, like all freshmen (other than students with special needs and those requiring focused interventions). At any of our comprehensive high schools, Emily would have had multiple options for developing an academic program tailored to her individualized needs and interests, and she would have been offered a quality college preparatory program – as rigorous as she desired – at the same time enjoying unparalleled opportunities for enrichment, on a campus with some of the best facilities and faculty anywhere.
Well, that’s certainly not the way Emily and her family saw it. Give them a little credit for knowing what’s in her interest.
As she told me, “I do not test well and so my lower test scores would have put me in the lower classes. When I went to visit Woodside, I realized that was where I would have been put. And I know that being in an environment where kids aren’t as willing to learn and the teacher doesn’t communicate as well with you, that would have set me up for disaster.”
Added her mother, “I wanted an environment where Emily would be challenged. She loves to learn, but her test scores don’t always reflect her ability. At Summit, she will be able to take AP classes. She will be challenged. There are high academic standards but there’s incredible support in all the subjects by all the teachers for students if they need help. I just find that it’s such a great environment for her to learn; she is excited to go to school every day.”
Emily has two brothers who graduated from Woodside, so it’s not as if the Joneses weren’t very familiar with the school. They attended open house in every school in the district at the end of eighth grade, Ann said, and, in the end, it was Emily’s choice. Emily called Woodside “a great school” – but not what she was looking for.
Frankly, I think it was gutsy for Emily to choose a small charter school, where she had no friends, based on her judgment of what would be best for her. Given the 5:1 ratio of applicants to places at Summit, there are a lot of Emilies out there.
Contrary to images of Woodside, one of the wealthiest, most exclusive towns in California, Woodside High is a diverse school: 38 percent of the students are low-income; 50 percent are Hispanic; 36 percent are white; 5 percent are African-American. There is a big achievement gap: The API score of Hispanic students is 146 points below that for whites in the school (692 vs 838) – no doubt for many reasons that are difficult to address. The API score for low-income students is 679; there is no separate break-out for African-American students.
Until there is a statewide student data system working right, there will be arguments over graduation and dropout rates, because families are transitory, and the schools don’t know if students have quit school, moved, or transferred.
Woodside puts its four-year graduation rate at 96 percent, with 90 percent of its graduates going on to some form of college. If that were true, no one would be trying to get into Summit Prep Charter High. Other state data point to a different story: 423 seniors in 2007-09, with only 327 graduates. Of the 327, just over half graduated having passed the A-G course requirements needed to get into a four-year university. Woodside’s 52 percent was higher than Sequoia Union’s 49.8 percent, about the average for San Mateo County (51.7 percent) and considerably better than the state’s 33.9 percent.
In the end, Emily worried she’d be among the 48 percent who didn’t take the required courses – and pass them – to qualify for a CSU or UC school. That’s why she’s at Summit.
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Actually, in five minutes of chatting freely on the video, Emily mentions a number of reasons for wanting to go to Summit instead of Woodside — but never mentions tracking at all. You brought it up after minute 5. The fear of tracking is Guggenheim’s storyline — and maybe it was Emily’s parents’ issue, but she didn’t mention it. She made those comments to you only after you prompted her.
And in fact, Emily says: “Woodside is a great school. I really liked it and I really wanted to go there before I saw Summit.” That’s certainly not what WFS portrayed.
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I purposefully did not introduce the word “tracking.” The worry that Emily would not end up in AP and college courses was, from the start, what prompted the Joneses to consider Summit. The school’s size, friendly atmosphere and extensive system of academic supports are what led her to choose Summit and why she is happy there.
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Yes, and that’s great. But what Emily tells you on the video is not the story that Waiting for Superman tells the viewers. The movie misleads the public.
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… And note that your headline specifies that Emily feared being tracked. But it’s evident from what she says that that wasn’t a big deal to her, so your headline misleads too.
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emily and her mother told me personally that the fear of being tracked and unable to take ap courses was a prime reason for trying to get into summit. since every student at summit takes ap courses, she did not have to worry about the potential of being tracked out of those classes.
sorry for lack of capitalization. my mobile devide will not let me do it for some reason.
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I’m just pointing out that in several minutes of describing her reasoning, Emily never even alluded to the tracking issue at all until prompted by John, and she also made it very clear she would have been happy to go to Woodside High, which she described as a “great school,” but just preferred Summit.
By contrast, Guggenheim used Emily as the vehicle to portray tracking as an archaic and unsuccessful system that does harm to all but the advanced-track students; and clearly portrayed Emily as desperate to get out of Woodside and into Summit.
Based on what Emily says in John’s interview, Guggenheim’s storyline about her in Waiting for Superman is distorted and misleading.
The question of every student’s taking AP courses is a different issue, but an interesting one.
Here in San Francisco, it’s our left/green/progressive faction on the Board of Ed that calls for allowing all students to take honors and AP courses without entry criteria — a political view that those courses are “elitist” unless all students have access to them. The same faction calls for eliminating the academic admission criteria to our district’s well-known academic high school, Lowell, and the arts auditions for our arts magnet high school, Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts (where, disclosure, I have been a parent since 2005). (Those are SFUSD’s only selective magnet schools.) Their reasoning is the same — admissions criteria are “elitist.”
Others counter that AP courses are intended to be college-level courses designed for the high achievers who are ready for college-level work in high school, and that allowing any student who wants to take them into AP courses inherently lowers the academic level, making it impossible to maintain them as college-level courses. Does Summit actually REQUIRE all students to take AP courses?
That debate hovers in the background of the description (in WFS and the ensuing discussion) of the differences between Summit and Woodside high schools.
My guess is that the conservatives who tend to be the biggest (though definitely not the only) supporters of charter schools as a solution, and the most enthusiastic fans of Waiting for Superman, would not necessarily share the left/green/progressive view coming from that SFUSD faction* that academic admission criteria for high-level classes and magnet schools are “elitist” — yet in accepting the story of Woodside vs. Summit in WFS, they are inherently agreeing with that view. Have they thought this through?
Discuss among yourselves.
*Currently: commissioners Sandra Fewer, Jane Kim and Kim-Shree Maufas, three of the seven SFUSD BOE members.
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The over emphasis on test scores to the exclusion of other factors seems to be the biggest issue in her choice.
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Conflicting statements surfacing re: the “Emily” from Redwood City who is featured in ”Waiting for Superman”, is to be expected with any film made by the same producer who made Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”. Stretching truth is convenient when one has an agenda. I didn’t mention Emily in my review of the movie, but it occurred to me when seeing the movie, that her motivation for wanting to go to the charter school was flimsy at best. So she doesn’t do well at taking tests even through she know the subject matter. It’s a cop out. Part of suceeding in life is learning to demonstrate your knowledge and test taking is part of that. In her endeavor to ensure she be eligible for courses to prepare for college, didn’t she realize that she would have to take tests once in college? Or how about the challenging testing of applicants for jobs these days, a stressful expereience reported in the San Jose Mercury (10/19/10)? Mastering how to take tests is part of mastering how one will prevail with the tests of securing a job or other challenges in life.
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It looks like there’s a simple yes or no question that has yet to be answered: Does Woodside bar students with low middle school test scores from taking high school courses that would lead to AP classes?
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Suz’s question leads to more:
– What are the criteria for admission to AP classes at Woodside High School?
– What are the standard criteria for admission to AP classes at high schools, public and private; or what’s the range, what are best practices, what does the College Board recommend (if anything)?
And I’m still interested in whether Summit REQUIRES students to take AP classes or just opens AP classes to all students. In either case:
– How common is that practice among schools nationwide?
– Is it more common among charter schools than among traditional public schools?
– How does the College Board view that practice?
– What are the outcomes for students in schools where all students are allowed/required to take AP classes — SATs, AP test scores, standardized test scores?
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When will you do an interview with parents and students respresenting Woodside?
“Woodside High School Teachers – Man, You’re Super! Thank you for teaching ALL the students in our community!”
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I’m perplexed why Emily is seen as a poster student for charters, or at least why John Fensterwald and Davis Guggenheim use her story as their justification for teacher-bashing in support of charter schools. Within the first few minutes of her interview, she states that she wanted to go to Summit because it’s smaller and there’s more time with the teachers, there’s no P.E. so that (apparently) gives her more time for her studies, and that she doesn’t test well. And these reasons are teachers’ faults how? Do you not think that ALL teachers would love to have smaller classes and so have time for more individual attention? And P.E.? Come on, really. And how many students trapped in our relentless test-driven mania don’t “test well”? And yet it’s those very tests upon which schools and teachers are now assessed and found wanting. I repeat: that’s a teacher’s fault how? Examine your premises about charters. If Emily is the best you can do to prop up your support, you better think harder.
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“I repeat: that’s a teacher’s fault how?” Who said it was the teachers’ fault?
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The movie makes it very clear that (in the filmmaker’s view) everything wrong with our educational system is the teachers’ fault. Not poverty and related social ills, not lack of school funding — no, it’s all the teachers’ fault.
Meanwhile, John’s interview with articulate and poised Emily makes it clear on its face: Guggenheim distorted and misrepresented her story. She was not desperate to escape Woodside High — she spoke very admiringly of it. She was not living in fear of tracking — when left to describe the situation on her own, she mentioned several other reasons she wanted to go to Summit, speaking for a full five minutes. Until John prompted her, she never alluded to tracking at all. The movie gave a false picture.
So my question is — why would anyone believe anything else in Waiting for Superman, now that we know that the part of it that has been checked out was a lie? The line “fool me twice, shame on me” was made for this situation.
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What was the point of including Emily’s story in the film? Wasn’t the point that children of all economic backgrounds are not getting needs met, and that there are alternatives that can work for them. I don’t think the point was that Woodside high was somehow bad for all students. By simple inference the film is at least saying that Woodside is working for the students tracked into the more rigorous classes. How much of Emily’s anticipation of being tracked into less rigorous classes was fear vs. reality? I’m not sure we’ll sort out that specific question in the public media. But it’s not necessary to just focus on Emily’s story. In my school district students get tested all the time and the results of those tests determine which classes they take. Class sizes are just not that flexible and schools basically have to make students fit into the boxes we have available.
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Yes, that was the movie’s point, but the movie made that point by telling a false story about Emily. The movie also very emphatically made the point that the tracking system isn’t working for the students in the general-ed classes — with zero backup. It just said so and you’re expected to accept it.
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Well if the film is not telling Emily’s real story at least Emily and her mother have also bought into the film’s telling. But that point of view just doesn’t pass my smell test. They seem like the type of people that would want to correct the story if it was false. And I didn’t see any of that in the inteview with John.
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this is a great discussion. thanks, john, for providing a place where people who are serious about issues facing education can have civilized discussions. i learn quite a bit by reading the columns and posts.
to the issue at hand, summits mission is to provide an education that ensures every student is prepared to go to, and succeed in, a four year college. part of that mission involves every student passing at least six ap courses. i understand that sf debates the propriety of limiting access to ap courses but this really is not about access to the courses for every student, it is about whether the school has the ability to support the diverse academic needs of each student enough to make it possible for each student to succeed.
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sorry, comment posted before i finished.
i think it is fair to say that emily chose summit for a variety of reasons and superman chose to use the tracking issue to illustrate a larger point. that does not diminish what i think is the larger point in that there is a culture at summit among the entire staff that each student is capable of achieving at high academic levels, regardless of background, and that each student gets the attention they need to be successful.
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I just wanted to emphasize the last point made in this article, and that is how easy it is for a district to play with their graduation rates (given how flimsy state requirements are for such reporting). This district reported a 96% graduation rate, but others say it is MUCH less (by using the actual, hard numbers of enrollees and graduates) … and the same goes for a district’s reporting of their college-bound students … I have found these same games played by San Jose Unified in their state-reported data, so be very wary about rosey stat’s coming out of California schools! We simply lack a system to adequately hold any district accountable for their “cooked books” right now.
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Yes, it’s clear that Emily chose Summit for a variety of reasons, but the story that WFS told was that tracking was the great, looming issue. That story is false. It’s also clear that Emily thinks highly of Woodside — she calls it a “great school” — and that WFS’s portrayal of Emily as desperate to escape to an alternative is false. These points are apparent to anyone watching John’s interview with Emily.
The movie misled the viewers.
Chris Bertelli, since you’re analyzing the issue of Summit’s “culture … that each student is capable of achieving at higher levels,” can you clarify about the concept of AP classes? OK: AP classes are designed to be college-level. Not college prep, but college-level. The intent is to offer these classes for the exceptional achievers, those who are able to do college-level work while they’re still in high school.
So is Summit’s philosophy that all students are able to do college-level work while still in high school?
Also, can you answer my question as to whether Summit REQUIRES all students to take AP classes? Your implication is that yes it does, and that it requires them to take a full six AP classes.
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Caroline: Summit requires all students to take and to get a passing grade (not necessarily a 3 on the AP exam) on all six AP courses.
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Thanks.
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I’ve been on the road. Took a while to get to it.
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This reminds me of the creative editing George Crile used in his 1983 CBS documentary The Uncounted Enemy.
For example, George Crile reshot Mike Wallace asking questions in a more aggressive tone and interspersed Gen Westmoreland licking his lips during these “tough” questions.
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