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A number of blogs have recently picked up the trailer for Whatever it Takes, a documentary about a high-performing urban school in the Bronx.  If the 10-minute trailer is any indication, the film will be powerful and inspiring.  Still, like many fictional or documentary films that celebrate a set of heroic students and educators working against all odds, the film raises some important questions.

For one, we should be careful not to absolve entire systems--school systems, communities, voters and policymakers--of their shared responsibility towards the nation's most vulnerable children.  After all, it takes systemic solutions--advanced through collaboration among leaders, front-line educators, communities and, yes, policymakers--to spread the wealth beyond disconnected islands of excellence.  (Indeed, the Learning First Alliance report Beyond Islands of Excellence focuses on lessons on systemic improvement drawn from five successful districts.)

It's no doubt important to celebrate the achievements of stand-out schools--and of the remarkable educators, parents and students who make them excel--if only to apply lessons learned in such schools to public schools and districts across the country.  This, in fact, is a major goal of the success stories we publish on this site.

That said, any celebration of a successful school should be clear-sighted about the scope of our challenge in struggling schools. It should acknowledge the level of commitment required from educators, communities and the public at large to ensuring every child equal access to an excellent education.  As education blogger Eduwonkette points out, the charter school profiled in Whatever it Takes requires applicants to submit teacher recommendations and responses to a fairly rigorous set of essay questions.  This degree of self-selection among students and families distinguishes the school from other schools in the Bronx.

  Finally, films like Whatever it Takes mustn't allow us to forget our ultimate goal. We must move beyond widespread dependence on heroic educator/martyrs who sacrifice everything, doing "whatever it takes," to turn around struggling schools.  As we've noted elsewhere, our ambitions for widespread and sustainable school improvement will remain at risk as long as "martyr" remains part of the job description for teachers and leaders in our most troubled urban schools.