What's The Point ?

I have been a teacher in the Minneapolis Public Schools for ten years. As a teacher, I've been frustrated by the rhetoric on public education that comes from politicians and the media. The dysfunction of schools becomes exaggerated while solutions are often oversimplified. I'm excited that school improvement is once again a high priority issue in Minnesota and the nation. But I'm concerned that the current emphasis on testing has focused school reform on some specific academic skills while the broader purposes of schools are being neglected. In different settings and for different students-schools are expected to meet many needs.

With the country poised to make historic decisions about the future of public education, this film has the potential to inform public opinion at a critical moment. There is a common belief that schools need to be changed-somehow. But there is little consensus, or even discussion, of why we have public schools in the first place. The lives of the students in the film offer a perspective on what is actually needed of schools--and how schools are meeting those needs.