The Lottery (directed by Madeleine Sackler)

So, as mentioned in my last post, I saw the new documentary The Lottery this past Friday. First of all, I will say that, on an emotional level, it really moved me and I salute Madeleine Sackler’s skill in storytelling. The film follows four families through the two months leading up to the lottery for admission into the Harlem Success Academy charter school.

A tone of urgency is set from the very beginning. If you have not been living in a cave or plugging your ears for the last decade or so, then you’ve heard of the achievement gap. I worry sometimes that overexposure to the term causes it to lose its bite, so it helps that The Lottery opens with a series of statistics that breathe life into what the gap really means. For example, we learn that “the average Black or Latino 12th-grader reads at the same level as the average White 8th-grader.” Your stomach sinks more and more as each statement comes into focus and then fades away over shots of Black and Latino four- and five-year-olds laughing and playing. These statistics and the opening interviews of the film set up admission into a charter school as a veritable ticket out. As the ticket out.

We are then introduced to four of the children who would be vying for one of those tickets. Regardless of how you feel about the political debate surrounding city-wide charter school expansion, there is no ambiguity about what getting into Harlem Success would mean for these four kids. Yes, there are many factors involved in the academic success of a child, but you can’t help but feel that you are about to witness something life-changing. Each Harlem Success hopeful is about to have a railroad switch pulled on the track of his or her future.

From there, the film does what you would imagine. You are brought into the world of each child. They are beautiful children. They are funny and thoughtful, and they are absorbing and reacting to everything around them, the way small children do. Each of these children carries the hopes of their parents on their tiny shoulders. As a teacher, one thing that hit me was the regret expressed by several of the parents when thinking back on their own school experiences. The mother of Ameenah, the only girl followed by the film, thinks back on her own time as a student. She was lost. One of those kids who falls through the cracks. Ameenah’s mother is deaf and in one of the most poignant moments in the film, Ameenah, who often acts as interpreter, clings to her mother’s side during an interview and translates for her, “She said...her daughter—I am her daughter,” Ameenah clarifies, frankly, to the camera, “She wants an education for me.”

In another interview, Greg Jr.’s father, Greg Sr., who is currently incarcerated for 25 years to life, painfully wonders how things might have turned out differently if someone had thought to tell him that he was going to go to college (as students at Harlem Success are constantly told). He thinks of his son and beams, “Greg is amazing.” Later, in a moment that gave me more insight than I ever thought possible into the feelings that could drive a father to remove himself from his child’s life, Greg Sr. reveals the pain of a father who regrets his choices, hating what his son has to go through just to visit him. He does not know how to be good for his child. He asks, genuinely bewildered, “What can I do? I can’t just leave him. I’m responsible. What if something happened to him?”

I am rambling. My point is that the film shows four wonderful children who are all wrapped up in the love, hopes and dreams of their families and on this level it is a beautiful film and should be seen. So...why don’t I just say, “Go see it,” for goodness sake? Well, I am hesitant because there is another aspect of the film that worries me. Interwoven with the emotionally-charged stories of Ameenah, Greg Jr., Eric Jr. and Christian, is the political story of the charter school movement. In between scenes of the children and their families are, for example, scenes of angry anti-charter school activists fighting to keep Harlem Success Academy out of a public school space and away from public school money. At a hearing, we see Eva Moskowitz (founder and CEO of the Success Charter Network, which runs Harlem Success) and council members go head to head over the shutting-down of one of Harlem’s failing zoned schools.

It gets the viewer’s blood--already pumping from the cathartic family scenes—pumping even faster. Are “they” going to take away little Ameenah’s hopes for a future? Are “they” going to send Greg Jr. down the same path as his father?

Who is this “they” anyway?

The ominous “they,” as portrayed by The Lottery, is the teacher’s union—the UFT. Moskowitz tells us that, in fact, both the anti-charter school protestors and the anti-charter school government representatives are in the pocket of the union and she even describes the union’s methods as being “thuggish.”

Whether this portrayal of the UFT is truthful or not, I feel unprepared to say. In all honesty, I am woefully ignorant about the practices of my union at its highest levels, and I want to learn more in the coming months. My interactions with the union have always been on a much smaller, more personal level. And, so, this characterization of the union as “thuggish” makes me squeamish. I feel a bit like a little kid being told that her father is a crook. As a public school teacher, I am a member of the UFT. When I was excessed last year due to budget cuts, it was the contract that protected me and made it possible for me to conduct my job search in a rational, non-frenzied way (leading to a position at a school I have come to love dearly). I (as do all my teacher friends), by choice, give far more than the official number of working hours stated by the union contract. When the state was considering making drastic school budget cuts, it was my school’s union representative (a very hard-working teacher) who gathered us together to make phone calls demanding that the cuts not happen. It would mean larger classes and fewer resources for our kids. Based on my personal experiences with the union—on the teacher level—I see hard-working, ethical people who want the best for our schools.

On the other hand, I recognize the dangers. In my past experiences, I have encountered teachers who consistently gave far less than their best to their students but were protected by tenure. And when, as I mentioned before, I was excessed, I couldn’t help but feel some bitterness that my being selected had nothing to do with my work or quality as a teacher, but was entirely determined by the fact that I was the last one hired (a standard dictated by the union contract).

Back on that first hand, as little as I know about the union and its history, I do know that before it existed, teachers could be terminated with little-to-no cause and that this put experienced, highly-paid teachers in great peril of being wrongfully let go.

My point? This issue is complicated. The union is not all good or all bad. Just like anything in life, right? Why are we forever trying to alternately demonize and idolize the organizations and people around us? Perhaps because it is easier to point a finger at a scapegoat than to probe the deeper issues.

Therein lie my qualms about The Lottery. I would have loved to see the film explore some of the grey of the charter/public debate. I also would have loved to hear some voices of cooperation between charter and public schools. If this could not be found at the higher levels (as Sackler suggested when asked during the Q&A, explaining that her offers to interview UFT leaders were declined), I guarantee it could be have been found at the teacher level. I am able to say this with confidence because I am a public school teacher and I am interested in and open to what is happening in the charter schools. I have plenty of friends who feel the same way. I also have plenty of friends teaching in charter schools who have expressed interest in the many different methods being used in successful public schools right now. The charter schools and public schools have lots they could learn from each other.

The only voices of the public schools in The Lottery are that of a principal at one of the struggling Harlem public schools and that of a former public school teacher who now works at Harlem Success. Neither of these voices offered any hope that the public school problem could be solved in any other way than to abandon ship. The public school principal sounded utterly resigned when talking about the limitations of working with the union. The former public school teacher seemed to have concluded that nothing could be done to fix the system she had left.

I fear that the audience of Friday night’s screening left the theatre with only one possible conclusion. Abandon the public schools. Expand the charter school networks, full steam ahead. I just don’t believe this is the only answer. What is up with this “us” vs. “them,” “you’re either with us or against us” mentality? I look at my own school, a successful and happy place that operates very differently from what I understand to be the charter school way, and I wonder, “Is what’s happening here not valuable? Is this not worth working on and sharing?”

Enough divisiveness. (Cue “We are the World.”) There are innovative things being tried in both charter and public schools, and there needs to be a dialogue about these methods and strategies. The Lottery does a fine job of pulling at the heartstrings (I shed my fair share of tears by the end of the screening), but I think it is irresponsible to evoke these kinds of inflammatory feelings without channeling that energy toward cooperation. The film felt like a call to arms against the traditional public schools. What we need to do is take a deep breath and ask, “What can the charter and public schools learn and borrow from each other to start providing real and beautiful learning for all of our kids—not jut the ones lucky enough to hit the educational jackpot?”