A new film about education

It's called The Lottery because it is a lottery to draw for seats in a successful charter school, like the kind Obama withdrew funding for when he first took office. A young filmmaker couldn't understand all the interest in attending this charter school so she pursued the story, thus producing the film called The Lottery which critics say could change the course of education in the United States because of its harsh exposure of unions' influence on education for the benefit of teachers and not the students. WSJ:

What's funny," says Madeleine Sackler, "is that I'm not really a political person." Yet the petite 27-year-old is the force behind "The Lottery"—an explosive new documentary about the battle over the future of public education opening nationwide this Tuesday.

In the spring of 2008, Ms. Sackler, then a freelance film editor, caught a segment on the local news about New York's biggest lottery. It wasn't the Powerball. It was a chance for 475 lucky kids to get into one of the city's best charter schools (publicly funded schools that aren't subject to union rules).