The movie begins with a statistic that “only 38% of high school seniors can read at 8th grade level” ( Bowdon, 00:01:26) to shock the viewers into Journalist Bowdon crafts a coherent, frequently clever and engaging, entirely one-sided film that portrays public education, especially in New Jersey, as unredeemably corrupt and wasteful of school funding. He argues for two alternatives to traditional schools. One is publicly funded charter schools, which are privately run bring in titution revenue also, free public schools. The other is vouchers plans, which would provide public funds to pay all or part of the tuition at private schools. Bowdon cherry-picks much of his evidence, although a senior official with the New Jersey state teachers union hoists her own feeling in the film
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After more statistics about falling test scores to expose the poor quality of education in public schools, Bowdon informs viewers about the amount of spending per classroom annually to make his first point: government spending on education is excessive and pumping more money into schools is not the solution. He uses New Jersey as the perfect example of this, revealing that despite the amounts that the state spends on education, the schools are failing their
After more statistics about falling test scores to expose the poor quality of education in public schools, Bowdon informs viewers about the amount of spending per classroom annually to make his first point: government spending on education is excessive and pumping more money into schools is not the solution. He uses New Jersey as the perfect example of this, revealing that despite the amounts that the state spends on education, the schools are failing their