MOVIES

If there is one political issue that should be simple, it’s education. Everyone is for education; everyone agrees children deserve the best education possible. But trying to determine just how to give children that education is a raw subject, and that's where the problems begin. Continuing off the heels of the highly successful “Waiting for Superman”, "The Lottery" shows how just how many sides to a one-sided issue there can be.

The lottery is systematic way for student to be selected into highly prestigious charter schools. In particularly the one in the film named Harlem Success Academy, offer children in their area the opportunity for a better education and boast a higher literacy rate and better test scores than the public schools in the same area. "The Lottery" follows four families with young children entered in this year's lottery. Three live in one-parent homes. One has a father in prison; another has a mother living in Africa. Despite their circumstances though, all four kids seem bright, sweet, and full of potential, and that may be both the greatest tragedy and most powerful element of this film: watching it, we know that some or all of these children will not win this lottery and the rest of their lives will be profoundly affected by it.   

The Film presents urgency to this issue and illumined the bitter battle between the Charter schools and the traditional school. But further analyst clearly shows that charter schools are not the final solution. A 2009 study done by Stanford University found that, on average, charter schools perform on standardized tests about the same or worse than public schools. The film does note, however, that most charter schools do not outperform public schools and focuses on those that do. It also states that only one in five charter schools outperform (close to the 17% statistic).  This is will be a ongoing battle in the near future while all along our children will still suffer.

  

Raymond Beamon