Hard Times

At the start of each school day, the students of Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore, MD, walk past a statue of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, a former student of the historic school that opened its doors in 1883.

The scene is captured in the HBO Documentary, “Hard Times at Douglass High: A No Child Left Behind Report Card,” and award-winning filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond are careful to point out the irony: Before Marshall won “Brown v. Board of Education" in 1954, Frederick Douglass was one of only two high schools African Americans were allowed to attend in Baltimore. But 50 years later, the student body at this inner city school is once again segregated, separate from but no where near equal to surrounding schools in whiter, richer neighborhoods.

Hard Times is a cinema verite documentary, a film technique that uses very little voice over, commentary, or editing, letting the camera capture the story without much molding from the filmmakers. Unfortunately, the style doesn’t allow the film to clearly explain how NCLB mandates are impossible for urban schools in poor neighborhoods like Douglass to meet, but it clearly conveys the school’s struggles.

There aren’t enough textbooks to go around, students regularly miss school, and of those who do show up, many refuse to go to class, preferring to make trouble in the hallways instead. Only a handful of parents attend Back to School Night, even fewer go to the school’s holiday performance, and nearly 70 percent of the teachers – of which there is a shortage – are uncertified. Some of the best teachers leave in frustration, like a gifted young English teacher who quit halfway through the year, leaving three classes of confused students to be taught by a “permanent substitute.”

It’s a powerful portrait that shines a glaring spotlight on the problems underfunded urban schools face, but the title would have been more accurate if the filmmakers left off the last half. It captures the hard times in vivid detail, but doesn’t report the failures of No Child Left Behind.