International Cinema Festival of India

There’s money to be made in the public schools system, argues Bob Bowdon, therefore simply when you crop out the unprofitable bits, like great teachers. In his education documentary “The Cartel,” Bowdon, a TV news reporter in New Jersey, paints a notable ugly impression of the institutional depravity that has resulted in almost incredible wastes of taxpayer money. The numbers express the tale: $17,000 spent per student, and there’s just a 39% reading proficiency rate, it’s hard 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 his picture: there are the teachers union and school board members who have managed to set aside 90 cents of every taxpayer dollar into everything but teachers’ salaries — while various school administrators get paid upwards of $100,000. The other cabal is the supporters of charter schools, the private schools that can elude the authority of the public school system and would facilitate inner-city kids if their taxpayer money could be more sensibly used. In those unkept public schools, Bowdon points out, it’s practically unimaginable to fire a teacher — so even a deficient one has a career for life.

Adding and Subtracting

“The film examines lots of diverse aspects of public education, tenure, backing, patronage drops, subversion –meaning theft — vouchers and charter schools,” says Bowdon. “And as such it kind of serves as a swift-moving primer on all of the big topics within the education-reform movement.”

The documentary first appeared on the festival circuit in summer 2009, appearing in theaters nationally a year later. Hopefully it will get a rise, and not be overshadowed, by the more recently released documental “Waiting for Superman,” by “An Inconvenient Truth” director Davis Guggenheim. He sees the two documentaries as taking alternative approaches to the equal problem, “The Cartel” by examining public policy and “Superman” focusing on the human-interest aspects. “My movie is the left-brained version, more analytical,” Bowdon says, “‘Waiting for Superman’ is more the right-brained treatment.”

A Battle for Control

The left-brained stance means arguments that follow the economics — money misspent, opportunities wasted. Whilst he calls it left-brained, still the film reaches some disheartening moments of emotion. A girl’s weeping upon hearing that she wasn’t selected to attend a charter school, that she’s stuck in her public school, portray the failure of a system as well as his charts and interviews.

And though there’s a satire in this kind of public depravation happening in a state notable for its organized crime, it’s unambiguous that this is not an isolated collapse. Any spectator will acknowledge the failings of their own state’s education system and the battle for control. 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 knows it’ll be an upward struggle to regain control from those who’ve worked so hard to make education very profitable for the very few.

The Cartel Movie, by filmmaker Bob Bowdon.