The Cartel

This article is about the documentary film. For the record distributor, see The Cartel (record distributor).

The Cartel
Directed by	Bob Bowdon
Written by	Bob Bowdon
Release date(s)	October 9, 2009 (2009-10-09) (USA)
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Cartel is a 2009 American documentary film by New Jersey-based television producer, reporter and news anchor Bob Bowdon, that covers the failures of public education in the United States by focusing on New Jersey, which has the highest level of per-student education spending in the U.S. According to The Internet Movie Database (IMDb), the film asks: "How has the richest and most innovative society on earth suddenly lost the ability to teach its children at a level that other modern countries consider 'basic'?" The film regards teachers' unions as the cause of the problems (they are "the cartel" of the title), due to, among other things, the obstacles they put in place to firing bad teachers, through tenure. It also makes the case for school vouchers and charter schools.

The film debuted at the Hoboken International Film Festival on May 30, 2009 and was awarded "Best of the Festival (Audience Award)". It opened in New York City and Los Angeles on April 16, 2010, Houston on April 23 and in Denver, Minneapolis, Boston, Washington D.C., St. Louis, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Chicago on April 30.

The Cartel is Bowdon's first film; he left Bloomberg Television to focus on the project, and spent two years on it. The film was supported by the Moving Picture Institute.

Interviews

Bowdon interviewed "school administrators, teachers, parents, students and education advocates" for the film. Among the interviews are State Education Commissioner Lucille Davy, Clint Bolick (former president of Alliance for School Choice), Gerard Robinson (president of Black Alliance for Educational Options), and Chester Finn (president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute).

During her interview, the head of the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) Joyce Powell responded to criticisms of the tenure process, and referencing a statistic that only 0.03% of tenured teachers are removed from the classroom, suggesting 99.97% are "doing a good job," said "I think 99.97% should be celebrated."

Controversy

The NJEA called The Cartel "an orchestrated attack against public schools and the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA)." Furthermore, the NJEA stated that Bowdon and his crew failed to identify their "true agenda" when interviewing Powell, instead questioning her under false pretenses of an "independent 'documentary on public education in New Jersey,' with a focus on No Child Left Behind, the state school funding law, and charter schools."

Bowdon said that the NJEA invented the fact that the film had had any financial support before it was completely finished, and that his partnerships and financial support were all post production. He said that rather than addressing any of the film's substantive arguments, they focused instead on personal attacks at him. He also said, "It's more than a little ironic that the NJEA criticized me for lack of transparency through an anonymous author."

Davy said that some issues raised by The Cartel, particularly superintendents' contracts, were already addressed with new accountability regulations.

Reception

Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times wrote, "Visually horrid and intellectually unsatisfying, The Cartel demonstrates only that its maker has even more to learn about assembling a film than about constructing an argument."

Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe wrote, "as is the wont of certain TV news reporting, his approach pre-chews every detail, lest we fail to understand it. He’s smart. We’re dumb. Let the animated inserts explain the facts." He added, "it’s a testament to how fascinatingly bad things are for our public schools that “The Cartel’’ is as watchable as it is."

John Anderson of Variety called The Cartel "effervescent and tedious, crusading and craven". He wrote, "when Bowdon gets Joyce Powell on camera -- Powell being the president of the movie's bete noire, the New Jersey Educational Assn. -- he delivers the really tough questions in voiceover, depriving Powell of a chance to answer them and the viewer of a chance to hear them answered." He also compared the movie unfavorably to a documentary on similar themes, Waiting for "Superman".

Amy Biancolli of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "There's no history offered. Not a peep about No Child Left Behind. What's more, there's no breakdown of urban Jersey's demographics - the percentage of kids on school lunch aid, perhaps? - or any attempt to link classroom woes with urban problems. Yet even these gaps wouldn't have doomed the movie if Bowdon had sexed it up with a bit of old-fashioned cinematic salesmanship. The film plays more like a 90-minute TV special than a feature release. It's all talking heads, clanging music, substandard graphics, long scans of Web-page headlines and Bowdon's heavily cadenced voiceovers."

Matt Pais of the website Metromix wrote, "Bowdon would have something if he scaled back the outrage and analyzed the causes of these practices and, ultimately, why so many children around the country aren’t being properly taught. Instead the filmmaker tries to position New Jersey as a microcosm of America and turns “The Cartel” into a local news report that goes on forever."

Impact

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who came into office in 2010, saw the movie before being elected, and said that it "helped to mold for me the final outlines of what I wanted to do if I were lucky enough to become governor." He praised that documentary, as well as Waiting for "Superman", which came out after he was already governor.

External links

• Official website
• The Cartel at the Internet Movie Database