Weekend greetings, CharterFolk
Sundance closes today.
Sixteen years ago, Davis Guggenheim, acclaimed director of An Inconvenient Truth, premiered his next film, Waiting for Superman, at Sundance in Park City.
Of all the mainstream films released over the past half century, it is hard to think of one that resonated more deeply with our work. It didn’t just spark conversation. It defined a generation of education reform. It marked a high-water moment when public attention, philanthropic energy, and moral urgency briefly aligned around the idea that public education in America had to change.
Bill Gates embraced it.
Oprah elevated it.
Major new philanthropic commitments accompanied it.
The film’s title took its inspiration from an anecdote that Geoffrey Canada credited to his mother. No superhero was coming to solve problems. People would have to act themselves.
At the time, the title felt like a challenge.
Over time, it has come to feel more like a diagnosis.
Today, Waiting for Superman reads less like a call to action than a description of our national posture toward public education.
Waiting for a solution that most believe will never come.
Occurring against a crisis in learning unlike any we have faced before.
One of the most common criticisms of Waiting for Superman at the time was its heavy focus on charter school lotteries.
The film offered searing images. Enormous numbers of parents desperate for their children to escape failing schools, clinging to the possibility of a better option. And then the heartbreak. Families learning that their number wasn’t called, that their child would not be among the lucky few.
We all understood what the film was trying to do – build a sense of urgency to expand better opportunity.
But for many, the emotional center of the film became not the children who gained access to better schools, but the far larger number who did not.
So, in the end, the movie powerfully captured the problem. And it described how new solutions were being made for some.
But not yet for all.
Such was the state of our movement at the time.
Able to make things better for many, many kids and families.
But not yet something that had the capacity to make things better for all.
Fast forward to 2026.
We now find ourselves in a moment when another generation-defining – or at least what should be a generation-defining – film has been released.
Turnaround: The Reinvention of New Orleans’ Public Education System, directed by David Osborne.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth the small price.
It tells the next chapter of our story. And it does so by starting where we should:
By claiming a victory, something we’re so often hesitant to do.
One of our biggest victories – the success our movement has had in New Orleans since the storm.
By some measures, New Orleans schools, which serve far higher percentages of students in poverty, are surpassing state outcomes.
Which demonstrates better than any other story we currently have what our movement has evolved to become.
Something with the capacity to make education better for all.
In that way, as flawed as the phrasing is, the movie is a kind of declaration that, in fact:
“Superman has Arrived.”
A bookend to what was released in Sundance 16 years ago.
Now, to be clear, its not my contention that Turnaround is a perfect rendering of the story. I have my quibbles here and there.
But just as Jerel Bryant stressed in our recent CharterFolk conversation, the work in New Orleans was never static but kept evolving as it recognized shortcomings and course-corrected over time.
So too is our description of the work that has happened in New Orleans improving over time.
And in the broad sweep of things, David’s portrait is, by far, the strongest rendering we’ve seen yet.
And the heart of its accomplishment is its accurate depiction of a very inconvenient truth, which is that:
The storm was not the anomaly in New Orleans.
This is a mistake, and a mischaracterization, that society falls back upon again and again.
And which we sometimes contribute to ouselves.
This notion that somehow, were it not for Katrina, none of this could have happened.
As if educational progress of this scope is only achievable at the expense of unspeakable tragedy and heartbreak.
That is exactly the wrong conclusion to come to.
Because, truly, CharterFolk, the anomaly in New Orleans was not the storm, but our approach.
Which, like any well-made movie, consists of three acts:
Vision, execution, and advocacy.
Exactly the troika surfaced in the recent conversation I recorded with Dana Peterson, Jerel Bryant, and Caroline Roemer.
Turnaround goes deeper on each.
Starting with vision.
Or call it a “North Star.”
Or as Dana called it during our discussion, “a framework of principles” that persisted over time.
He’s still advancing them himself to this very day …
… just like the movie shows that his predecessors at New Schools New Orleans – Neerav Kingsland …
If every big city public school system in our country improved as much as New Orleans has over the past 15 years, that would be one of the most important things to happen to families living in poverty in our nation’s history.
… and Patrick Dobard …
We should have a sense of alarm and anger that this [the system’s historical failings] should not happen again.
… courageously carried the vision before, championing an approach that refused to stop at 30 to 50 percent of students but ultimately arrived at a new paradigm where all students became served by charter schools.
The second act is execution, represented by Jerel.
Some of the most powerful moments in the film follow him crossing the campus at Carver, encountering alumni who radiate pride in what their school has become …
… and bumping into students on other Collegiate campuses with whom he has unmistakable rapport.
It cracks open how New Orleans finished the job – how it went from half of students being served in charter schools to all, with the hallmark of that transition being existing public schools converting successfully to charter school status.
Sometimes as new separate organizations.
Other times under the umbrella of a charter management organization, as happened with Carver and Collegiate Academies.
Finally, there’s the third act, which, of course, is advocacy – what Caroline represented on our podcast, but which has been carried by a chorus of courageous advocates and policymakers, perhaps most notably by Leslie Jacobs …
… who across decades …
Just because we have a system of autonomous schools does not make the challenges go away. We are still dealing with a student population that comes in with a huge opportunity gap. Many needs, and we have a lot of learning to do. And I fundamentally have confidence that will come up with better solutions than we would if we were under a traditional centralized school system.
… has been consistently uncompromising about the need to evolve the entire system to create greater excellence and equity for all.
And when you put these three acts together, they become an accurate depiction of the most inconvenient truth of all, which is that:
What has been achieved in New Orleans can be achieved in every city in America.
Without need of some tragic storm.
For years, we have been unwilling to claim this victory and apply all three acts to other contexts.
But like Sundance itself migrating from its first host city to another …
… so too are we now preparing to bring the story of New Orleans to cities across America.
Our second city is Indianapolis, a place that is assembling all three acts of the well-made movie.
Articulating vision, with the Mind Trust playing the New Schools for New Orleans role.
Executing well, with leaders like Earl Phalen …
… playing the role Jerel has played in New Orleans, operating both great new startup schools and conversion Innovation schools.
And advocating well – establishing a great new state association …
… working hand in hand with policymakers like Bart Peterson who, like Leslie Jacobs, has been at this …
… for decades.
CharterFolk, this is how it happens.
This is how Superman arrives.
In ways that demonstrate just how flawed that whole framing is.
Because if there is anything that we have learned in New Orleans and across our three and a half decades of work together, it’s that there is no Superman.
There is no single figure.
Nor is there any single organization.
Profound work of this kind requires the contributions of thousands.
Folk.
SuperFolk.
And, forgive me, but we don’t “arrive.”
We don’t come from other places.
We appear.
We arise from local communities themselves.
Because every community has within it the potential to show the most inconvenient truth at work in public education today.
Which is that every city in America can use the charter school movement to completely reinvent its schools.
Call it:
“SuperFolk Appear.“
The blockbuster our movement is finally ready to premiere.