Character mistake: When Mrs. Barrett is on the school board stating her case, she said that the test scores on the practice exam were 35% below passing. Earlier in the movie, when Joe Clark opened the letter, the Eastside passing score was 33%, which was 42% below the required passing score of 75%. Since she was trying to get him removed, it would have been to her advantage to say 42% instead of 35% - 35% would have made it 68%, which would have still not been enough to pass.
Lean on Me (1989)
1 character mistake - chronological order
Directed by: John G. Avildsen
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Robert Guillaume, Alan North, Beverly Todd
Factual error: In the scene where Joe Clark and the Vice Principal go to the project buildings to see the young girl's mother, they walk down a short ramp to an apartment. Those project buildings are in Paterson,N.J. (where the story takes place), but walking down that ramp takes you to the boiler room, not an apartment. None of those buildings have apartments like that.
Trivia: Although in real life Principal Joe Clark improved the discipline problems at Eastside High School, he did not, contrary to what the film has you believe, improve the academics in any meaningful way. Although test scores improved very slightly his first couple of years as principal (partly due to the fact that he expelled so many bad students) from 1986 to 1988, during his time as principal, Eastside High School had the lowest state exam passage rates in all of New Jersey. One of these years in particular, under Clark's tenure, Eastside High's passage rate was as low as 24.1%.
Question: At the very beginning of the movie, Joe Clark is enraged when he finds out that there is a meeting going on without him. What exactly is the subject of this meeting (other than the obvious dismissal of Mr. Clark)? Why is Mr. Clark accusing them of "selling out," and what do the people in the meeting refer to when they say, "You want to be posturing, etc., but we just want to work."?
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Chosen answer: They are discussing some of the things that Mr. Clark has done that has "embarassed" the school. They are debating what to do about him. And by "posturing," they mean his insistance on wearing African dress and espousing his political beliefs.