For all you HBO subscribers: The network tonight is premiering a documentary about a troubled Baltimore high school that is having more than a little trouble meeting the benchmarks laid out in the No Child Left Behind Act.
A recent New York Times review of "Hard Times At Douglass High: A No Child Left Behind Report Card" says that the controversial legislation doesn't actually figure that heavily in the film that "isn't really asking whether No Child Left Behind can help Douglass. It's asking whether anything can."
More from Neil Genzlinger's preview: "[Sixty-six] percent of the Douglass educators are not certified, we're told. The school is running on substitutes and other emergency fill-ins.
And that is the bottom line for schools like this. Bureaucrats can make all the rules and set all the benchmarks they want, but none of it will change anything if no one can be found to do the hands-on work of teaching. As seen in this film, it's not just a thankless job; it looks disconcertingly as if it might be an impossible one."
Wow. I know what I'm watching tonight.
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