Some things I liked some I did not.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Director Madeleine Sackler explores some of the major issues surrounding education in this documentary with an emphasis on the popularity of charter schools. As the U.S. public school system is under a lot of scrutiny, parents in Harlem and the Bronx enter their children in a charter school lottery in hopes that their children will be one of the select few to receive a quality education. She touches on the gap between afro- American and Latino students v.s white students how it is a large achievement gap between the two and examines a few reasons why that is. The movie shows four different families going for the same goal of getting picked from a lottery of thousands for the chance to enroll in one of Harlem's top schools, Harlem success academy. The documentary tries to show both sides of the argument over education system in Harlem. With the recent boom in charter schools, Schools that are state funded but not run under teachers union contract, a lot of people do not agree with the practices of charter schools. One of the major arguments discussed in the documentary is charter schools and how they non- union. Be it they are non-union it gives them the freedom hire teachers outside of the typical union stipulations and also get to create their own curriculum which they feel is best for the learning experience of children. The Harlem success academy creator feels that other schools don't perform as well as the charters schools because they are more focused on the teachers union issues than actually teaching the students. Another issue with education system discussed in the documentary is the lack of accountability for poor performing teachers. Under performing teachers, what's is the best way to handle them? Do you give them chance after chance to improve or do you let them go right away? According to the documentary through the union contract they make it very hard to fire under performing teachers or even push the teachers to really perform. Were as with any other job if an employee is not performing to the best of their ability they get let go. This particular issues makes it hard to correct and fix under performing schools. Eva Moskowitz the creator of Harlem success academy feels the teacher's union contract is one of the biggest down falls of the education system. "It is hard to run a school where everything is pre-determined because what you need to do in order to meet the needs of children is you need to constantly redefine and redesign the school schedule" according to Eva Moskowitz The next point in the documentary is the non supporters of charter schools. The unions are against charters because they don't want to be the "the face of the opposition against charters" in the words of Eva Moskowitz. Unions are against charters because they feel the only reason they succeed is because they have small classrooms or they don't educate special ed student. The teachers unions is threaten by charters schools because they feel by letting charters into the neighborhood and letting them take over under performing schools it will increase the class room size of other schools. On the other hand Harlem success feels all though they are do the community a service by taking over the under-performing school because for one the school is not producing and two the enrollment in the school is low to begin with. I personally take the stance of the Harlem success academy. I feel as though obviously charters schools have shown evidence that the methods they are using are working. So I feel instead of trying to run off charter schools out of the neighborhoods they need to see what is really making them successful and try to implement that into more school. One of the ways charter schools are deemed "better" is they have smaller class sizes. Well, I understand in most cases that just isn't possible there are more student than there are educators. But on the other I agree with a lot of Eva Moskowits practices as far as the open door policy, administration should being able to go into a teachers classroom and observe at anytime. If a teacher is not performing that gives administration a way to observe and possibly figure out solutions to the problem. One of the main problems with public education is no accountable for un performing school. They keep claiming to be "fixing" the problem but how exactly are they fixing the problem? By closing schools down and moving different teachers in? Through the teachers union contract they make t very hard to fire a teacher. I do believe that every teachers is allowed due process but if nothing is being done on the administrative side than no one wins. According to the documentary it would cost the New York tax payers $250.000 to fire a teacher. So basically in this case no one wins. The students are left with a lousy teacher because A) the union has not only made it impossible to get rid of them but also made it hard to help them by places so many stipulation on what administration can and cant do and B) the city cant afford to get rid of them. I feel that when the school community works together as a team with one goal and that is to educate the child, I believe schools operate better. But the way it is now it seems to be two separate entities you have administration and than you have the teachers.

"The Lottery" directed by Madeleine Slacker mainly explores the problems children face with getting adequate first rate education, and the struggle of this because of several political and personal problems that exist because of mainly where are they are being raised and unfortunately the color of their skin. This inequality is backed up in the film with staggering stats stating; black 12th graders perform at the same quality as white 8th graders, and 58% of black 4th graders are functionally illiterate. In neighborhoods like Harlem shown in this documentary, it's shown how a lottery is held for students to gain enrollment at charter schools where the quality of the education far exceeds what is offered in public (zoned) school. The film highlights four families with four children vying for one of the 475 seats available. These are four of more than three thousand children in New York trying to escape their predestined reputations and hoping on having a better charter school education pave their future. The notion that a student has to be lucky and win a lottery to receive an education is as disturbing as the entire educational problem explored in this film.All these families want for their children is the best education possible for them. Some of these children's families even moved out of the country, in the documentary one family moved from Africa, they moved to give their children every opportunity for a bright future. However, the future these children might have is not so bright due to the situation they have to deal with. This is in large part due to the racial inequality that exists in New York City and most cities in America. This segregation keeps the black and Latino families at a struggle to compete with white families because of the qualities of the schools that are offered. Teachers don't want to teach in the bad areas and the city doesn't want to throw money to try to fix these bad areas. These "bad" areas are socially constructed and keep the educational system from bettering itself and keeps discrimination flourishing. To touch on this issue of race you have to look at the demographics of New York City and the wealth distribution. Harlem, which is portrayed in the movie, is predominantly African American and is lower in income than white neighborhoods in other parts of the city. The wealth associated with the neighborhoods is directly correlated to the schools and education that are offered. These low income neighborhoods feed off the public school that is not up to par with the desired education of America. The charter schools serve as relief, but as shown in the title of the documentary, this relief comes as small as the off chance of winning a lottery for these families. For many of the children their failure is inevitable and many of the problems causing this are never addressed. This in part due to schools accepting the title of failing and the tenure these teachers keep in the midst of this failure. This is because the cost of firing a tenured teacher in New York City cost over 250,000 dollars of tax payer money and the city is frankly not willing to give that up. So instead of firing teachers that are feeding failure to child after child the state for its own selfish benefit to not lose money keeps the mediocre teachers teaching. The irony of this on a broader view not only hurts the educational system but many of the vital pillars of all urban cities. To further elaborate on this point, the zoned schools operate as a union and that why it's so hard for schools to make drastic changes as far as faculty. The charter schools on the other hand are built on results, this enables the charter schools to fire teachers when necessary giving the children the best or at least better quality of teacher available, this is why the lottery is so appealing to families. Charter schools are also publicly funded; this enables them to be freed from many of the obligations schools of the state are bounded with. From the National Education Associations website it's shown that a charter school can only be granted if the school offers an experience that is qualitatively different from that of the zoned schools. So basically the school must have better academics which mean better teachers. This is also why charter schools are often in urban cities because of the high density of children getting into schools, and the abundance of bad areas and bad schools. And the results these schools offer on a national show why so many parents are willing to sacrifice for their child to get to enroll in one. Charter schools have significantly higher test scores, and all teachers are certified. This is all made very apparent by the film. The film seems to be unbalanced and tends to make the unions and zoned schools look substantially worse than they really are. The charter schools are displayed as obedient, intelligent and accommodating while the zoned schools seem quite the opposite and are portrayed as unorganized, undisciplined and unaccommodating. This seems to be more of Madeleine Slacker trying to prove a point from an extreme point of view rather than her showing both sides of the story. However the film does document the existing problem and at least shows a possible solution in the utilization of more charter schools and hopefully in my mind at least the elimination of the need for a lottery. At the core of this urban problem is the underdevelopment of areas of cities, such as Harlem, that display discrimination and unfair distribution of wealth which in turn leads to unsatisfactory education and a need for a lottery in the first place.

The LotteryThe only problem with a teacher-run school is that it is only open 10 months of the year.Fortunately, the charter school depicted in this documentary is open all-year round.Every year New York's Success Academy holds an admission sweepstakes for entrance into its prestigious halls.Following hopefuls from Harlem and the Bronx as they vie for desks in the class-size controlled classrooms, viewers are edified on the grassroots movement away from teachers' unions, and the bureaucratic red tape of the public system.With interviews with the movements most important members, like, Geoffrey Canada, founder of a school for underprivileged children in Harlem, The Lottery is as disheartening as it is enlightening.While it is prejudiced against public schools, The Lottery's bias does expose the system's undeniable decay.Incidentally, children should only be entered into school lotteries to see who gets to wear the classroom body armour this week.(Green Light)vidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

As a child of middle-class suburbs, I was lucky enough to have access to a high-level public education that served me well and helped me successfully graduate on time and send me on my way to college. When I moved out of the suburbs and into the city, I began to realize just how fortunate I was. Every day, the newspapers would shoot statistics about failure rates, budget constraints, teacher strikes, etc. In a nation such as this, the failure of public schools not only affect how our children go through their youth. It affects what happens after, and this affects all of us.'The Lottery,' a documentary by Madeleine Sackler, faces this problem head on by showing the story of four young children and their families as they attempt to gain access into one of the few successful public schools in Harlem, NY. The school, known as Harlem Success, is a public charter school that, due to insufficient funding, can only afford to accept small numbers of children at any given time. Therefore, entrance into the school is done through a 'lottery,' in which thousands of children are entered, but only a small portion are given enrollment.Ms. Sackler, as the documentarian behind this story, does a fantastic job of handling both sides of the situation. She shows the struggle, the hardships, and the heartbreak that goes along with being a parent of a child forced to attend inferior school systems. She also shows the other side of the story, which (for some reason) would prefer there to be no public charter schools and only the degrading current schools. While the emotional look of the film does get rather heavy handed, it is appropriate due to the heart-wrenching subject matter. To know that only a small amount of this desperate children will be able to receive a high quality education is a truly depressing notion. It's a system that must be changed, must be fixed, and quickly. If not, it's going to just continue to get worse, sending our society further into a downward spiral.Final Verdict: 8/10.-AP3-