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VHS Sale Bundles

Early Education Bundle From promising preschools to elementary classrooms, these three documentaries explore the successes and failures of our early education system. *This bundle includes: The Promise of Preschool, Early Learning, and Elementary Confusion.*	Teaching Bundle Are you a teacher? A parent? What makes a great educational leader? Explore the issue in these documentaries. *This bundle includes: Teaching: The First Year, Teacher Shortage, and Living with AIDS* and Teaching.**	Arts & Technology Bundle Track the history of arts education, the growth of technology and the successes of high school scientists. *This bundle includes: Saving the Arts, Young Scientists,* and Promises, Promises.**
School Reform Bundle Take a comprehensive look at the Essential School Movement and the Children Achieving program, as well as other innovative plans nationwide. This bundle includes: School Crusade, The Fifty Million Dollar Gamble, and A Tale of Three Cities.	School Reform Bundle #2 Explore the history of American public school reform, the issues surrounding school funding, and the growing trend of charter schools. This bundle includes: It's Your Money, Education's Big Gamble: Charter Schools, and In Schools We Trust.	Special Topics Bundle Learn about the growing trend of A.D.D. over-diagnosis, get a first-hand look at the special education system, and explore the educational ramifications of social promotion in schools. *This bundle includes: ADD, What's So Special about Special Education?, and Failing Forward.*

All Documentaries - VHS & DVD

Attention Deficit Disorder: A Dubious Diagnosis? - ON SALE Is A.D.D. real? Strong evidence suggests that the ADD epidemic is a result of a long-term, unpublicized financial relationship between a drug company and the nation's largest A.D.D. Support Group. This provocative documentary helps parents and educators find alternatives to unnecessary labels and powerful drugs. [more]	Big Time Losers Big Time Losers examines the price colleges and athletes pay when sports become big business. Told through the stories of six athletes, the film examines the impact of sports on academics at elite schools and at big-time state universities where football and basketball traditions run deep. [more]
First to Worst & California Schools: America's Future This DVD features our groundbreaking documentary First to Worst, a look at the history of California's struggling school system, along with California Schools: America's Future, a follow-up documentary that chronicles Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempts to avoid $4.8 billion in potential cuts to public school funding. [more] Follow the story of California's decades-long struggle with reform and school funding. Get both of these programs on on DVD.	Caught in the Crossfire - ON SALE Frances Davis lost all three of her sons to street violence. Caught in the Crossfire examines the roots of the violence that killed Ms. Davis' sons and countless other children nationwide. The program profiles the efforts of community activists involved in the search for solutions. This moving documentary has earned several awards and is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Television and Radio.
Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk How good is higher education in America today? The competition for admission into highly selective colleges and universities may be greater than ever, but the vast majority of American college students don’t attend those schools. And, even if they did, the same question arises: Does the reality of higher education measure up to future students' dreams and the educational needs of the nation? [more]	Discounted Dreams Community colleges are the fastest growing segment of American higher education–and some say the most vital to America’s future. They offer an array of classes and job training programs. But growing enrollment is straining the system, underfunding persists, and in spite of some remarkable success stories, they fail to graduate even half of those who come. [more]
Early Learning - ON SALE Most American parents believe that their children's schools are at least okay, but American students are outperformed by students in nearly every other industrialized nation. That' s the bad news. The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way. This program profiles four very different approaches to reforming schools. [more]	Education's Big Gamble: Charter Schools - ON SALE Charter schools server over 105,000 students across the country. They're exempt from most state regulations and oversight. But are charter schools gambling with our children and our tax dollars, and avoiding accountability? Or are they changing education for the better? [more]
Elementary Confusion - ON SALE American education seems to lack both national standards and common sense. This program follows up on two schools previously featured in "Early Learning," which traced the efforts of first, second, and third grade students learning math and reading. learning to read and do math. How have the students progressed since we first met them? [more]	Failing Forward - ON SALE Social promotion is the practice of promoting students to the next grade despite their low achievement. And it's just the beginning of a seriously flawed system. Who's really losing out when student's only have to show up to get a passing grade? [more]
The Fifty Million Dollar Gamble - ON SALE This documentary (based on three years of videotaping in one high school) details the often painfully slow progress of school reform: teachers and bureaucrats squabble, even as some students are making great progress. It's the most detailed look at one of the country's leading education reforms, the Essential Schools Movement, and its founder, Dr. Theodore Sizer. [more]	Growing Up in the City - ON SALE Sasha, Paul, Jessica and James attend the same magnet school on the upper west side of Manhattan in New York City. In this three-part series, host John Merrow takes you on an engaging and honest journey inside these young adolescent's lives, who differ in race, gender, and ethnic background. [more] "Growing Up in the City" is a three-part program, and comes packaged as 3 separate VHS tapes. It's also available through Reframe on 3 dvds for $39.95.
In Schools We Trust - ON SALE Public education has been around for approximately 150 years. History tells us that Americans have great faith in public education, but it also shows we rarely agree on what public schools are supposed to do. [more]	It's Your Money - ON SALE We spend more than $220 billion a year on public schools, and millions more on lawyers fighting about how we spend it. What are we getting for our money? Spending conditions vary dramatically within each school district, often depending on how much money a community can raise through local property taxes. [more]
Living with AIDS and Teaching - ON SALE Dawn Marcal is 25 and lives in San Francisco. She is HIV positive and has AIDS. Dawn has chosen to do volunteer work in local high schools--educating students to the consequences of experimenting with drugs and sex at an early age. Dawn is also putting a face on a disease that most everyone has heard about but has not experienced on a personal level. [more]	Lost in Translation: Latinos, School & Society (en Español) - ON SALE The extraordinarily high drop-out rate among Latinos is the result of many factors, one of which is language. But it's only part of the picture. This documentary explores the successes and failures of different types of language programs. AVAILABLE ONLY IN SPANISH. [more]
The Promise of Preschool - ON SALE For parents, educators, and lawmakers, the promise of preschool is that children will enter school ready to learn, but, in reality, the results are mixed. This program chronicles the experiences of four families and reveals the range of preschool education available. [more]	Promises, Promises - ON SALE For more than a century, educational technology has been promising to revolutionize learning yet this promise has never been kept. Technology in the 90's exploded, but why haven't schools been able to keep up? [more]
The Real World of Teach for America Over the course of two years, Learning Matters producers followed 7 Teach for America recruits as they fulfilled their assignments in New Orleans. This original online series shares the triumphs and challenges these young teachers faced. [more]	Saving the Arts - ON SALE What will be lost if the arts disappear from our public schools? The arts teach discipline, problem solving, cooperation, concentration-a nearly endless list of educational benefits. Adding an arts program to a school's curriculum increases student attendance, participation, test scores and graduation rate--all commonly accepted measures of excellence. Yet when school budgets are cut, the arts seem to be the first to go. [more]
School Crusade - ON SALE In 1994, Philadelphia was one of the worst school districts in the United States. Looking for a radical change, the city hired an untested superintendent, a lawyer with a background in theology, David Hornbeck. Hornbeck's "Children Achieving" program was designed to trim the bureaucracy, add kindergarten, introduce technology, create a new testing system, and hold teachers accountable for student learning. But Hornbeck's dream and the reality turned out to be two different things. [more]	School Sleuth - ON SALE Host John Merrow turns private detective in this tongue-in-cheek drama to solve "The Case of an Excellent School." Private Detective Merrow explores five aspects of schooling: safety, the academics, the physical environment, the adults in the building, and a school's sense of purpose. School Sleuth shows there are many ways to evaluate schools beyond standardized test scores and college acceptance rates. [more]
Searching for Heroes - ON SALE The six extraordinary heroes profiled in the program--a social worker in Dallas, a librarian in Los Angeles, a conductor in Washington, DC, a youth worker in Milwaukee, a grandmother in Orlando, and a principal in Indianapolis--represent just some people committed to the lives of children. [more]	The Search for Values - ON SALE Where do children learn their moral values? Who is responsible for teaching them? And what message are our schools sending if they try to avoid the issue entirely. Are our schools, as one observer said, becoming "...morally dangerous places" for children? Can school become the meeting ground instead of the battleground on which to work out our differences? [more]
Starting Over - ON SALE Starting over is possible, even in difficult economic times. In fact, starting over will be every worker's job, at some point: the average person will change careers at least three times. Despite the myth that people only contemplate career change in mid-life, 90 percent of those who change careers are not in mid-life. People can and do change careers at all ages. [more]	A Tale of Three Cities - ON SALE Several major American cities have accepted the challenge of school reform but none with more energy, commitment, and public attention than Philadelphia, Chicago, and Seattle. A Tale of Three Cities tracks the dramatically different approaches–and varying results–of these school districts. [more]
Teacher Shortage - ON SALE Why do 30% percent of new teachers– 50% in urban areas– leave teaching within five years? Is the problem one of recruitment or retention? This documentary examines several areas that are the result of or may be the cause of the so-called "teacher shortage." [more]	Teaching: The First Year - ON SALE The gap that exists between the vision of a bright-eyed graduate of a school of education and the reality of a first year teacher with his or her own classes is one that must be faced and crossed by all beginning teachers. This program helps future teachers discover and discuss the gap and develop tools to help make the transition from graduation to classroom. [more]
Testing...Testing...Testing - ON SALE Testing...Testing...Testing poses 12 provocative questions covering the complex and controversial issues of measuring learning, achievement and intelligence in children. We put six experts--test writers, critics, and professors--to the test, our test. They provide the answers to our questions and to your concerns about testing in public schools. [more]	Toughest Job in America - ON SALE This gripping story follows Philadelphia superintendent David Hornbeck's six year battle against an entrenched bureaucracy, a stubborn union, hostile politicians, budget deficits, and a deep-rooted belief that poor and minority children cannot achieve. But complicating the story are Hornbeck's own inflexible streak of moralism and his tendency to alienate even his ardent supporters. What led to his eventual and sudden resignation?
What's So Special About Special Education? - ON SALE Twenty-one years after guaranteeing the disabled the right to go to public school, how well are we educating them? Follow two disabled girls through a year of school: one, a second grader with autism; the other, a seventh grader with Down's Syndrome. Both students are have access to "regular" classes, but does this translate to an equal or adequate education? [more]