International Cinema Festival of India

The education system in America is working right, says Bob Bowdon, however just for some — and those few surely aren’t the students. In his docudrama “The Cartel,” New Jersey TV news reporter Bowdon shines a light on the corruption and avarice that has resulted in the disappearing of so much taxpayer money in that state. The numbers divulge the tale: $17,000 spent per student, and at hand’s only a 39% reading proficiency rate, it’s unpleasant to argue that there’s a crisis afoot, but harder to agree on a solution.

The two sides of this struggle meet head-on in interviews throughout Bowdon’s film: there are the teachers union and school board members who have managed to allocate 90 cents of every taxpayer dollar into everything but teachers’ salaries — whilst some school administrators make upwards of $100,000. On the other side are the supporters of a charter education system, private schools in which parents can use tax vouchers to pay tuition and evade the public nightmare. In those unkept public schools, Bowdon points out, it’s practically unacceptable to fire an instructor — so even a bad one has a trade for life.

“The documentary examines lots of distinctive aspects of public education, tenure, funding, patronage drops, corruption –meaning theft — vouchers and charter schools,” says Bowdon. “And as such it sort of serves as a swift-moving primer on all of the hot topics amongst the education-reform effort.”

Bowdon’s documentary started touring the festival circuit in summer of 2009 and made its theatrical debut in April 2010. Hopefully it will get a boost, and not be overshadowed, by the more recently released documentary “Waiting for Superman,” by “An Inconvenient Truth” director Davis Guggenheim. Bowdon sees the two documentaries as taking different approaches to the equal predicament, “The Cartel” by examining public policy and “Superman” centering on the human interest aspects. “The two films make interchangeable conclusions,” Bowdon says.

The left-brained manner means arguments that follow the economics — money misspent, opportunities wasted. He follows the money to extract conclusions around how corrupt the Jersey school system is, but his picture features moments of soaring emotion and broken heartedness. The tearful face of a youthful girl who learns she was not selected for a spot at a charter school makes its own intense controversy for the disappointing failure of a state’s education system.

And though there’s an satire in this sort of public depravity happening in a state famed for its organized crime, it’s obvious that this is not an isolated collapse. Bowdon’s film illustrates a local problem, but any watcher will spot the systems of system failure in their own state’s schools. The one he seems to be most behind is the charter schools, which take the reins from the unions and give them back to the taxpayer. But he also makes it reliable that those in power are going to be unwilling to give it up without a struggle.

The Cartel Movie, by filmmaker Bob Bowdon.