Oprah Winfrey gives Denver charter school $1 million
By Jeremy P. Meyer The Denver Post
The high-performing Denver School of Science & Technology charter school was rewarded with a $1 million check on Monday's "Oprah Winfrey Show."
The big check will help DSST open three new campuses by 2020, but it was also Winfrey's way to promote a documentary that reformers hope will rock America's public education system.
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Waiting for Superman" by Davis Guggenheim, director of "An Inconvenient Truth," opens Friday in Los Angeles and New York. The film follows five children and their parents as they try to get into high-performing public charter schools.
Advocacy groups hoping the film will spur the kind of social change that "An Inconvenient Truth" and "The Cove" evoked have prepared campaigns to capitalize on the film's emotional message — creating websites that direct people into targeted action, such as electing school board members or pushing controversial legislation.
"The movie is going to strike a national conversation that needs to happen about the fact that we all need to do better to create high performing schools," said Bill Kurtz, DSST's chief executive.
The grant is the second largest to DSST. The school received $1.7 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to start up in 2004.
The film, in Colorado theaters next month, already has inflamed an ongoing debate over education.
In the film, lousy teachers are protected by their unions, producing schools that fail children at an alarming rate; the only hope for the children is to win the enrollment lottery to a good charter school.
DSST now has 500 students on the waiting list to get into its high school. With its new campuses, the school network hopes to have seats for 4,300 within 10 years.
During her show that aired Monday, Winfrey, whose Angel Network also gave $1 million checks to five other U.S. charter school networks to help reduce those waiting lists, called "Waiting for Superman" the "movie that could revolutionize America's schools."
Some believe the film's examination of the country's failed public education system will be as defining as "A Nation at Risk," the 1983 federal study that suggested the country's schools were failing and initiated a wave of reforms.
"What we hope this movie will do is bring this crisis to a wider audience," said Chris Watney, president of the Colorado Children's Campaign, which is hosting Guggenheim at its annual luncheon next month and offering screenings of the film in eight theaters. "This film can raise the level of awareness and it can provide a catalyst to get more people involved."
The Children's Campaign has created a website — coloradokidscantwait.org — that gives people a check list for pushing to fix their schools.
Democrats For Education Reform also is creating a website — donewaiting.org — that will tell people specific actions to take, such as asking people in Colorado to urge lawmakers to support funding for charter school facilities.
Organizers also have recruited national partners such as Stand For Children and The United Way.
"We hope to rent out some theaters so our members could see the film and stimulate a dialogue so we can talk about short-term and long-term action," said Lindsay Neil, director of Colorado's chapter of Stand For Children, an education advocacy group.
Teachers unions, which are portrayed as the enemy, are beginning to push back.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Teachers Federation, called the film "inaccurate, inconsistent and incomplete — and misses what could have been a unique opportunity to portray the full and accurate story of our public schools."
Angela Engel, a Denver author and former educator, said an insulting message is coming from films like "Waiting for Superman" and another education-related film, "The Lottery."
"I constantly see those people in positions of power telling those people that have none what is in their best interest," she said. "The message they get is to abandon their neighborhood schools,
and teachers are the problem."
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com Read more: Oprah Winfrey gives Denver charter school $1 million - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16129513#ixzz10AQJA2SL
