| Hard Times at Douglass High: A No Child Left Behind Report Card | 
 enlarge | Studio: HBO
Category: DVD
Buy New: $24.98
Avg. Customer Rating:   (4 reviews)
Sales Rank: 32286
Media: DVD-R
UPC: 883629555232
EAN: 0883629555232
ASIN: B001AY6QJY
Release Date: July 8, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 2 to 3 days
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Amazon.com
The No Child Left Behind Act was created to boost academic levels of American students by setting standardized goals across the nation - and holding states, districts and schools accountable for performance. For urban schools in high-poverty areas, reaching these goals is a daunting task, and many now face the possibility of being taken over by the state - even being shut down. At Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore, MD, the expectations raised by NCLB have reached a critical point. Academy Award winning filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond (I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School) offer a yearlong look inside a storied institution at a time when its very existence is in doubt. From cautionary profiles to triumphant tales, Hard Times at Douglass High serves as a reminder that education is inevitably an achievement of people, not policy.This disc is expected to play back in DVD Video "play only" devices, and may not play in other DVD devices, including recorders and PC drives. This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
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| Customer Reviews:
 This DVD Is Serious??? Please Get Into It! August 22, 2008
This dvd will make you say wow!! I was not surprised by the students' responses and concerns about getting an education. I was born, raised, and still live in Murderland (Baltimore, Md). The reactions and responses by the people in this video are not edited or staged, even though I wish they were. This is, unfortunately, how life and education is viewed, not just at Douglass, but at a lot, if not all the city schools. It's always darkest, before the dawn. I feel bad for saying this, but in Baltimore, its dark, been dark, and the people are so used to the dark, that they have become immune. Not all, but most Baltimoreans would probably run from or doubt the light (the dawn), when it does eventually come. Please see this documentary, that is all I have to say.
 Fogging the Glass July 21, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I first saw this film at the Silverdocs festival. The velvet ropes outside the AFI theater in Silver Spring were strung, the red carpet unrolled, and the Frederick Douglass High School Marching Band ushered in the audience with gleaming brass pomp and pride at the recent world premiere of "Hard Times at Douglass High," a documentary by Alan and Susan Raymond chronicling a year in this struggling Baltimore high school.
The responsibility of a documentarian is to hold a mirror up to nature, steady and unflinching, and the Raymonds have a storied history as documentarians. They were the creators of the early 1970's look at suburban American life in the PBS series, "An American Family." And they won an Oscar for their 1990's film about the challenges of an elementary school in Philadelphia.
But "Hard Times at Douglass High," like their previous exploration of urban education, is an exercise in smoke and mirrors. Instead of sounding an alarm to stir public outrage and action in the face of devastating school failure, the documentary seems content to be an apologist's lullaby, singing a nation to sleep.
Susan Raymond told the Washington Post ("The ABCs of Failure," June 23), "If you're depressed [after seeing the documentary], it means that we've succeeded."
But succeeded at what, exactly?
In their examination of Douglass's underachievement--16 percent of students were proficient in English, and 5 percent in math--the Raymonds give short shrift to the leadership and instructional failures that are the primary determiners of student achievement. Instead, they turn the cameras to focus on the results, not the causes, of school dysfunction: disengaged students and fractured communication with parents.
To be sure, this film was created with tremendous sympathy for the adults who work in this school. When a ninth-grade English teacher departs mid-year and is replaced by a string of substitutes, among them a school counselor-in-training, the camera casts a compassionate lens toward the departing instructor and those who follow. When we learn that 60 percent of Douglass's teachers are not credentialed, we are asked to sympathize with a school struggling to keep warm bodies at the chalkboard. What isn't shown, however, is the impact of this unstable, underqualified teaching staff on the students and their learning.
When a 17-year-old ninth grader refuses to attend a remedial reading class and argues in the hallway with an administrator, the scene is offered as proof of student unruliness. We are never challenged to wonder why the school placed this young man in a remedial reading class rather than credit-bearing English with stronger instructional supports, a strategy known to produce greater student learning, less failure and a better shot at graduating.
Telling someone else's story comes with tremendous responsibility. It is clear that the Raymonds knew little about the world they entered when they walked into Douglass with cameras in tow and even less about the struggles and aspirations of students within the walls of schools like this one. Throughout, the symptoms of school dysfunction are misdiagnosed as the problems themselves, leaving the hope and power of real reform a daunting distance from the hands of the very people who stand to make change happen: the educators.
If the aim of this film was to perpetuate stereotypes about urban students, parents, and schools; to excuse Douglass's poor performance when similar schools across the country are steering students to success; and to suggest that American public education can't be the powerful equalizer that we believe it to be; then, I guess they did succeed.
And they succeeded in excusing a nation for allowing the dreams of too many of students to atrophy in struggling schools - students like those young marching band members last Friday, asked to play at their own funeral.
Awesome: A must see for every educator June 30, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I saw this one day while flipping thru the channels. After watching it I felt as if someone had followed me personally around with a camera at the schools where I worked. I live in New Orleans, but the issues in the school featured in this doc are the EXACT one I and other teachers faced. This is an awesome doc
Astonishing Look At Our DysEducational System June 27, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I watched this right now on HBO. Every parent should watch this documentary. Even if your own kids go to a good school, you SHOULD make it a point to watch this show. Most kids in this documentary, instead of helping us compete against our Chinese and Indian counterparts, are going to be at the mercy of our tethering welfare system.
This documentary spends no time debating the pros/cons of the No Child Left Behind policy. Rather, it focuses on the daily struggles at a one of the many schools that does not make the grade. Some of the scenes will, without a doubt, shock you; embarrass you and might make you want to reach into the your set and choke a couple of those kids.
To Alan and Susan Raymond ... can you please make a PG version of your documentary ? I am sure some parents would like to show this documentary to their middle-school kids and teach them - how not to go wrong.
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