Randi Weingarten Responds to Education-Reform Documentary
By MICHAEL CIEPLY
TORONTO — Inevitably, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, is firing back at Davis Guggenheim’s education-reform documentary, “Waiting for ‘Superman.’” The film, directed by Mr. Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”), is showing at the Toronto International Film Festival, and is pointed by Paramount Vantage toward commercial theaters shortly.
The movie argues that teachers unions have protected incompetent instructors in public schools, mostly by winning contracts with a tenure system that makes it all but impossible to fire bad apples. Ms. Weingarten appears on-screen in the picture, both in an interview sequence and clips. But she mounts a much longer defense of her position, and an attack on the film, in a press release circulated on Monday.
In her statement, Ms. Weingarten praises Mr. Guggenheim’s good intentions, but says “Waiting for ‘Superman’” is “inaccurate, inconsistent and incomplete — and misses what could have been a unique opportunity to portray the full and accurate story of our public schools.”
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