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www.NOTwaitingforsuperman.org
October2010
The
Ultimate
$uperpower
Supersized dollars drive
Waiting for Superman
agenda
For nearly 40 years, “Follow the mon-ey” as been an axiom in both journalismand politics—although, as Shakespearemight complain, one “More honor’d inthe breach than the observance.”It is useful to resurrect the axiomin analyzing the multimedia buzz andpolicy debates swirling around themovie
Waiting for Superman
.
n
BY BARBARA MINER
I
n 1972, two young Washington Post reporters were investigating alow-level burglary at the Watergate Hotel and stumbled upon a hostof unexplained coincidences and connections that reached to theWhite House.One of the reporters, Bob Woodward, went to a high-level gov-ernment source and complained: “The story is dry. All we’ve got arepieces. We can’t seem to gure out what the puzzle is supposed tolook like.”To which the infamous Deep Throat replied: “Follow the money.Always follow the money.”
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at stake is not just whether this debate will lead to better schools. More funda-mentally, it involves public control andoversight of a vital public institution.In education, as in so many otheraspects of society, money is eing usedto squeeze out democracy.
Squeezing democracy
Waiting for Superman
and its surround-ing campaign reect an inuentialtrend that has proven adept at domi-nating education policy in both Re-publican and Democratic administra-tions. This bipartisan alliance unites20th Century conservatives closely aligned with the Republican Party who made the bulk of their money be-fore the dawn of the digital era, and21st Century billionaires more loosely aligned with the Democratic Party who generally made their fortunesthrough digitally based technology.(These two groups can loosely be de-scribed as analog conservatives anddigital billionaires.)Despite their differences, both groups embrace market-based re-forms, entrepreneurial initiatives, de-regulation and data-driven/test-based
Barbara Miner is a journalist based in Milwaukee and former managing editor of
Rethinking Schools
. (This article was writ-ten for www.NOTwaitingforsuperman.org,initiated by
Rethinking Schools
.)
This year’s must-see documentary,
Waiting for Superman
is an emotional,painful look at the U.S. educationalsystem, especially the bleak optionsfor poor children in inner cities. Evenits critics admit that it shines a light oneducational disparities. At the sametime, its admirers concede the lmoversimplies complicated issues, un-critically hypes charter schools and vilies teacher unions.What’s less obvious is how the lmserves a coordinated and well-fundedintervention in a polarized nationaldebate over educational policy. What’s
The
ULTIMATE
$uperpower
n
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‘Waiting for Superman’ and its accompanying campaignare part of a coordinated and well-funded
intervention
in a polarized national debate over educational policy.
MICHAELDUFFY
accountability as the pillars of edu-cational change. Under the banner of challenging bureaucracy and promot-ing innovation, both groups chafe atpublic oversight and collective bar- gaining agreements. Above all, bothrely on money to get their way.Two decades ago, challenges topublic schools were spearheaded by groups such as the Christian Coali-tion, a grassroots, church-based phe-nomenon that sought to abolish theU.S. Department of Education and toelect religious conservatives who couldtake over local and state school boards.Today’s bipartisan corporate reform-ers tend to sidestep democracy alto- gether by abolishing school boards,promoting mayoral control, and hiringcorporate-style CEO’s who answer toa city’s power elite. No longer preoc-
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www.NOTwaitingforsuperman.org
October2010
cupied with abolishing the U.S. De-partment of Education, they insteaduse their wealth to effectively controlit and to dictate reform.This developing alliance is evidentin
Waiting for Superman.
Paramount,Participant and Walden
First, the alliance involves the movie’sbackers—listed in the lm credits asParamount Vantage and ParticipantMedia, in association with WaldenMedia.Paramount Vantage is the specialty lm division of Paramount Pictures, which in turn is owned by Viacom—the international media conglomeratethat has gobbled up huge chunks of television and lm, from Nickelodeon,to MTV, to BET, to Comedy Central.For Paramount,
Waiting for Superman
exists primarily for one reason: to makemoney. (This is one possible explana-tion of the movie’s heroes/villains dra-matic narrative; Hollywood has neverbeen fond of complexity.) At the sametime, in 2009 Viacom launched theproject Get Schooled in conjunction with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foun-dation. Get Schooled, with a focus and graphic design in sync with the MTV generation, is designed to “leverageconsumer-oriented media and brands”to raise awareness about the educationcrisis, with the goal of supporting the work “of the broader education reformcommunity by leveraging the creativetalent, digital and media assets and re-sources of the country’s top media andconsumer brands.” Exactly what thisbuzzword-laden description ultimate-ly means is unclear, although
Waiting for Superman
and Davis Guggenheim,the lm’s director and co-writer, arefeatured on the group’s homepage.
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The involvement of Participant andWalden is more overtly ideological,and also more clearly shows the alli-ance between the analog conservativesand digital billionaires.“Maybe the public school in your areastinks. Maybe it’s a dropout factory staffed by burned-out teachers and you’re looking for an alternative. . . .What you’re looking for is a charterschool.
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With its roots in the eBay empire,its socially conscious lms, its globalconnections and its promotion of charter schools, Participant is a goodexample of the bipartisan digital bil-lionaires.Walden Media, on the other hand,is a classic example of old-fashioned,pro-Republican conservatives.Walden Media is owned by An-schutz Film Group, which in turn isowned by Anschutz EntertainmentGroup, which is a wholly owned sub-sidiary of the Anschutz Company.One way or another, it all reaches backto Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, who made his rst fortune as an oil wildcatter and who has moved on toreal estate, movie theaters, profession-al sports and the media. (
Fortune
oncecalled him America’s “greediest execu-tive.”)The business website
Portfolio.com
described Anschutz this way in a 2009prole, “Who is Philip Anschutz?”:
More than just a businessman,that’s for sure. He’s active in Christianfundamentalist and Conservativepolitical causes, including funding acampaign to support Amendment 2,Colorado’s 2006 ballot initiative tooverturn gay rights, the Institute forAmerican Values, the Center for Mar-riage and Families, and Morality inMedia.Invariably described as “secre-tive” or “reclusive” in the press, he isnonetheless involved in media. Hejust bought the
Weekly Standard
fora reported $1 million from RupertMurdoch’s News Corporation, whichfunded the small—but for a time,highly inuential—conservative maga-zine since 1995. Add this to his other
Participant has a dual strategy:make commercially viable lms anduse the movies to promote a political/ social agenda.
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Its liberal credentialsinclude lms such as
Syriana
,
Food, Inc.
,and
An Incovenient Truth
. The compa-ny was founded in 2004 by Jeff Skoll,using the billions he earned when hecashed out his stock in eBay (Skoll is#400 on Forbes current list of billion-aires, with a net worth of around $2.5billion).
Skoll, meanwhile, has gone onto found a foundation noted for its em-phasis on social entrepreneurship asthe best way to make change.Participant’s CEO is Jim Berk, whobefore joining Participant in 2006 was chair and CEO of Gryphon Col-leges Corporation, a for-prot chain of post-secondary schools. At Gryphon,Berk was responsible “for the forma-tion, platform acquisition and estab-lishment” of the for-prot schools.
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(For-prot colleges, meanwhile, arecurrently the focus of Senate hearingsfollowing a report by the GovernmentAccountability Ofce on misleading,unethical and sometimes illegal prac-tices to lure students to the schools.The for-prot schools, charges Sen.Tom Harkin [D-Iowa], have abnor-mally high failure rates for the students while enjoying abnormally high protmargins. “There’s irrefutable evidencenow that something’s gone wrong withthis industry,” Harkin says.
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)
Under Berk’s leadership, Partici-pant has become “an integrated mediaentity.” Two years ago, for instance,Participant received $250 million in -nancing from Imagenation, owned by the government of the oil-rich Emir-ate of Abu Dhabi, which is focused ontransforming the country into a cul-tural and nancial hub.Participant has also launchedTakePart.com, a “social action web-site” that, in its education initiatives,bemoans teacher tenure, promotesTeach for America, and idealizes char-ter schools as the Promised Land:
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