Bad Education

The largest embezzlement of school funds in US History casts a light on how the education system values teachers

Hello, and welcome to the second post this week on Yasha’s musings. I’ll try to keep up the two posts per week, but we shall see. After looking through some successful blogs, I have also decided to include a preface before every post (like this one) sharing any updates on the blog and explaining my thinking behind every post.

I just finished watching Bad Education last night on HBO and wanted to quickly put out some thoughts I had about what the movie said about our education system. Note, this isn’t a comprehensive review, but rather some thoughts I had while watching the movie that I felt would be interesting to share.

First some context. I assume the majority of people don’t have an HBO subscription, so I’ll quickly summarize the plot. This was a dramatization of a true story, so I don’t think I’m really spoiling anything but nevertheless, spoilers ahead!

The film basically tells the story of a superintendent of Roslyn School District in Long Island by the name of Dr. Frank Tassone and his assistant superintendent Pam Gluckin. Together they took the school district to the fourth best in the nation. Understandably the duo, especially Frank, was venerated among the school board and general population as the increase in ranking boosted the local economy by supplying a myriad of new jobs and increasing property value. By the end of the movie it is revealed that Pam and Frank had embezzled over 11 million dollars from the district. Specifically, they took 11 million dollars in taxpayer money and used it to buy houses and cars, rent fancy hotel rooms, and fund exotic vacations. Since the district was doing so well no one thought to ask questions except a school reporter who, after digging through some receipts, published the discrepancies in school spending. In the end Pam and Frank both got prison sentences, a lot of people lost their jobs, and the district slipped into the depth of school rankings. (If you want more details you can look up the real scandal online, but this pretty much sums it up)

The movie has some strong performances from Hugh Jackman (Dr. Frank Tassone), Ray Romano, and Allison Janney (Pam Gluckin). Hugh Jackman shows off, again, his acting chops coming a long way from the Wolverine to now acting as a psychopathic money embezzler and Allison Janney reminds us all why she deserves to be an Oscar winning actress.

Now the movie has a lot of themes going on. Frank is gay and tries to hide it from his coworkers by lying about a deceased wife. On another hand, we have the whole embezzlement scheme: how Frank and Pam took millions from a community and the aftermath. The movie does a good job in exploring these themes. However, I wanted to share some thoughts on a relatively unexplored theme, the teachers.

Near the end of the movie, Frank (Hugh Jackman) said to a parent:

My problem is you [a parent] …it’s the people who trot their poor children out like racehorses at Belmont. Who derive some perverse joy out of treating us [teachers] like low-level service reps. I mean do you [a parent] remember the teachers who sat with you, who held you by the hand, who taught you to add? And subtract, or showed you Gatsby, Salinger for the first time. Mockingbird, even. Do, do their names escape you? Are their faces a blur?…You [a parent] don’t want to see us [teachers] as people because that is not convenient for you. You just leave us behind at will. Never think about us again. All right, you might forget, but we don’t. We never forget, ever.

Wow. Just wow. A real slap in the face. This really got me thinking about how much I take my teachers for granted. Teaching is rough. When a teacher does their job right, students barely acknowledge the teacher and just walk out the class content with their grades (yes there are a few exceptions with some teachers leaving a lasting impact, but this is the exception and not the norm). We usually notice teachers when something goes wrong.

What kind of incentives are there in place for teachers? You have to remember in the film the district was doing well before Frank was caught in his embezzling scheme. This means that the education system is built in such a way that it rewards increases in rankings regardless of how this increase was obtained. Consider this, if teacher A is strict and emphasizes only material relevant to a standardized exam then students do well on this exam and raise school rankings, but students really don’t learn much. Teacher B is nicer to students and deviates more from exam material. Teacher B allows students to dynamically learn material, but this leads to lower test scores and a decrease in school rankings. The way the educational system is built teacher A gets a promotion while teacher B gets laid off. If the student reporter had not discovered this embezzlement scheme, I am sure the district would have become the best in the country, regardless of the millions being stolen.

Besides this there are also finances to consider. The district in Long Island was from a low-income area, which already puts it at a disadvantage with other high-ranking districts for obvious reasons. With so much pressure on Frank to turn around the district with little regard for how he did it, it is no wonder Frank made the decisions that he did. When Frank started to embezzle money the district started turning around, so instead of punishment for stealing money, he was celebrated as a hero. The point is what Frank did was wrong, no doubt about it and he deserves the punishment he receives. However, Frank is not the problem, the problem is the educational system that is riddled with motives that makes it hard for teachers to do the right thing. In other words, the only way this system will get better is if we stop treating teachers as “low-level service reps,” and start treating them as an integral part of our economy.

I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on Bad Education. Please take a moment and consider sharing this blog with your friends. Additionally, reach out anytime by shooting me an email at millenialmoviemusings@gmail.com!