Film Review: Feeling the Power of “The Providence Effect”: More than three decades after turning a west side Chicago parochial school into a nationally acclaimed private K-12 academy that annually sends 100 percent of its high school seniors to college, Paul J. Adams has attained legendary status as an educator. Providence-St. Mel, the private independent academy Adams helped establish in 1978, is among the nation’s most successful urban schools and provides the model for Providence Englewood, a public charter school launched in 2006 in a partnership with Chicago Public Schools.Adams and the two schools make for compelling filmmaking in “The Providence Effect,” a newly released documentary that examines the Providence-St. Mel story in detail. Directed by Rollin Binzer, the 92-minute film grips the viewer with inspiring interviews and vignettes of its students, teachers and alumni. Its most winning moments come unexpectedly when, for example, the film captures students cheering each other on to complete math and spelling exercises at the blackboard. Adams is seen as a blunt, driven man whose early life in the civil rights battleground of Montgomery, Ala., infused him with a fierce commitment to spreading education’s liberating and transformative power.
