I was anxiously waiting, waiting, to see Waiting for Superman and then last night I saw it. Why was I anxious? Because I knew I was coming in to Davis Guggenheim’s new documentary with a head full of preconceptions, and at the same time planning to write about the movie for All Life Is Local. Could I write fairly? First, let me confess the bias that I brought in with me: I had heard that the movie makes a hero of Michelle Rhee, who, as I see it, is a seriously flawed choice for the part. How can someone so abrasive, so politically tone-deaf, and so full of her own importance that she writes her own continued chancellorhood into foundation contracts as a prerequisite for grants, be held up as the examplar of “what works” in public education? That was my mindset going in, and in that mood I was expecting to argue with every frame of the movie -- or at the very least, find fault with its DC-based examples.
