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Diane Ravitch plays movie critic - it ain't pretty:

In the final moments of Waiting for “Superman,” the children and their parents assemble in auditoriums in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Silicon Valley, waiting nervously to see if they will win the lottery. As the camera pans the room, you see tears rolling down the cheeks of children and adults alike, all their hopes focused on a listing of numbers or names. Many people react to the scene with their own tears, sad for the children who lose. I had a different reaction. First, I thought to myself that the charter operators were cynically using children as political pawns in their own campaign to promote their cause. (Gail Collins in The New York Times had a similar reaction and wondered why they couldn’t just send the families a letter in the mail instead of subjecting them to public rejection.) Second, I felt an immense sense of gratitude to the much-maligned American public education system, where no one has to win a lottery to gain admission.

Waiting for Superman is not an indictment of public education. It is an indictment of our failed public discourse, driven by a callow, self-satisfied, ignorant, and money-grubbing media.

Our failed economy, disastrous foreign policy, obscene inequity, and crumbling infrastructure are a direct result of our inability to have a rational conversation about anything.