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Join United Way’s Campaign for the Common Good
08/17/10
This year, 1.2 million high school seniors will not graduate. That means some 6,000 students will drop out today. The numbers are even grimmer for young people of color.
Every parent’s dream is for our children to succeed – and for their success to surpass ours. But today’s young Americans are less likely to earn a diploma than their parents, a grim distinction not shared by any other industrialized country.
Oscar®-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) reminds us that education “statistics” have names: Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily, whose stories make up the engrossing foundation of Waiting for “Superman”. As he follows a handful of promising children, Guggenheim undertakes an exhaustive review of public education, surveying “drop-out factories” and “academic sinkholes,” methodically dissecting the system and its seemingly intractable problems. However, embracing the belief that good teachers make good schools, Guggenheim offers hope by exploring innovative approaches taken by education reformers that have—by reshaping the culture—refused to leave their students behind.
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