Director of School Choice Documentary "The Lottery"

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Should the future of lower-income children be determined by their ZIP codes? By public school bureaucrats?

Reason.tv Editor in Chief Nick Gillespie sat down with Madeline Sackler, director of the critically acclaimed documentary, The Lottery, which follows four students in New York vying for a coveted slot at Harlem Success Academy. Entry to the school is by drawing and the odds are long: Only one in seven applicants gets in. The reason so many people want to attend? The charter school boasts having 95 percent of students at grade level, compared to 56 percent at other city public schools

Sackler's film does more than brilliantly dramatize the heartbreaking results of each year's application lottery. It showcases how school choice can radically improve education for the poorest of students. "I'd been hearing that problems in public education where poverty based or culture based or because certain parents didn't value education, and yet, what I saw was totally contradictory to that," explains Sackler.

Approximately 8.30 minutes. Shot by Dan Hayes and Jack Gillespie. Edited by Dan Hayes.

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But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles

And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles