The Cartel screened at this year’s Philadelphia Independent Film Festival.

Clearly, doing worse means getting more money. Or so it seems for public schools in America.

Director Bob Bowden’s documentary, The Cartel, takes a deep look at the education system in America, and specifically New Jersey. The film examines why American public schools, despite the highest spending out of the world’s largest industrialized countries, ranks lowest in educational effectiveness in the same group. Over the next 98 minutes, Bowden explores the messed up world of education in America. There’s the illiterate man who taught for years before anyone stopped him from being a teacher. Or the high school senior who said he only learned to multiply though 4 x 4. Oh, and he didn’t really learn the alphabet until high school.

While these cases are pretty extreme, Bowden also shows how just the average student falls shockingly below students in other countries. It appears that our standards are low enough that we don’t need to be able to identify Iraq on a map. If the low test scores aren’t scary enough, the disappearing money should be. Bowden rips apart the massive waste, and literal disappearance, of money in schools. From $30 million being spent on a football field at a failing school to The Hangover-like scenario of teachers taking field trip money for their own use, the school system appears to be falling apart. Even without blatant corruption, other financial flaws exist. Some janitors make six figure salaries. The administration costs for school districts absorb huge amounts of money that is meant for students. And the luxury car count in a school district parking lot? Appalling.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Bowden does an excellent job touching on many issues going on in school districts, from bottom to top. He has the statistics and is able to support his film through what is clearly years of work and research. The film isn’t just a Bowden tell-all. He speaks with parents, students, administrators and others associated with the schools. He comes to startling conclusions about the teacher’s unions power over the system, as well as the government bureaucracy that prevents charter schools and other education benefits from happening. Despite his many attacks on the system, Bowden is also careful to remind viewers that not everyone in the system is a problem. Many teachers and administrators are passionate about their work, and make sacrifices for the betterment of their students.

If you don’t leave the movie feeling even slightly angered or a bit appalled that you were once under the thumb of the “cartel” and are now dumber than your European counterpart because of it, then you need a reality check. Even as someone who went through private and parochial schools from preschool through college, I was still enraged at what I saw. This movie says it all, and is a must see for any American.

Click here for a list of upcoming screenings.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Film Fest, Movies, review, trailer!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.