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Bad Education

Where to watch.

Watch Bad Education with a subscription on Max, rent on Fandango at Home, or buy on Fandango at Home.

What to Know

Anchored by an outstanding Hugh Jackman, Bad Education finds absurd laughs -- and a worthy message -- in the aftermath of a real-life scandal.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Cory Finley

Hugh Jackman

Frank Tassone

Allison Janney

Pam Gluckin

Kathrine Narducci

Sharon Katz

Geraldine Viswanathan

Rachel Kellog

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Related movie news.

What ‘Bad Education’ Got Right — and Wrong — About the Real-Life Scandal

By Ej Dickson

The only thing better than a fictionalized version of a real-life scandal is one that prominently features Long Island accents, and HBO ‘s Bad Education  ticks all those boxes and more. Based on a mid-2000s scandal in Roslyn, a well-off suburb of New York City, the movie tells the story of Superintendent Frank Tassone (a brilliantly creepy Hugh Jackman), a superficially charming and ambitious school superintendent who is arrested for embezzling millions from the school district. The case involved multiple arrests and millions of dollars, and would later become known as the largest school embezzlement scandal in U.S. history.

The film depicts how for years, Tassone and his second-in-command Pamela Gluckin (Allison Janney) brazenly used school funds to pay for their lavish lifestyles, which for Tassone included face lifts and first-class flights to London with his much younger boyfriend. Yet because the school has a high Ivy League admit rate, Tassone avoids the notice of authorities, until a dogged high school reporter (Geraldine Viswanathan) blows the lid off the scandal. Eventually, Tassone was sentenced to four to 10 years in prison, and was released on good behavior in 2010. Gluckin was sentenced to three to nine years in prison for stealing $4.9 million; she was released in 2011, and died in 2017.

Bad Education  is based on a  New York  magazine story by reporter Robert Kolker , and for the most part the film is relatively faithful to its source material. Yet there are a few key deviations, with the real-life Tassone taking umbrage with some details of Jackman’s portrayal of him. Here are just a few things the movie got right — and wrong — about the scandal.

1) Tassone did indeed throw Pamela Gluckin under the bus while concealing the extent of his own embezzlement. 

According to Bad Education,  Pamela Gluckin’s embezzlement is discovered when her son rings up a hefty tab from a hardware store, charging it to the school’s credit card; she is later confronted by members of the school board and Tassone, a longtime friend of hers, who refers to her as a “sociopath” before calling for her resignation. He then convinces the school board not to report the theft to the authorities, for fear of hurting Roslyn High School’s reputation and college acceptance numbers.

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Per Kolker’s article, this confrontation — and Tassone’s betrayal of Gluckin — is fairly close to what actually happened. Unlike in the film, however, it took a full two years after Gluckin was fired for Tassone to be investigated for his own misdeeds. Even after her firing came to light, Tassone continued to deflect blame, allowing angry parents to target their ire at the school board for covering it up, rather than at him. “[He] was seen by Roslynites as valiantly coming to the board’s defense, telling everyone who would listen how upset he was, how betrayed they all felt by Gluckin,” Kolker writes for New York  magazine.

2) Both Tassone and Gluckin were extremely brazen about their purchases.

The movie depicts both Tassone and Gluckin flagrantly flaunting their lavish lifestyles. Gluckin is depicted as particularly egregious, hosting guests in the Hamptons at one of her three homes, and blithely tossing around the school credit card to pay for her niece’s PlayStation. Indeed, it does appear that both Gluckin and Tassone were pretty blatant about their purchasing habits, with Gluckin driving around in a Jaguar with the vanity plate DUNENUTN (a detail that’s thankfully captured in the film) and Tassone using $56,645 of schools funds to pay for a Manhattan weight-loss doctor. His predilection for cosmetic surgery was also well noted by parents.

From Kolker’s New York  magazine article: “Says one parent: ‘Suddenly it’s not Frank in a Ford Taurus with his pants way up to here — it’s Frank with his hair slicked back and a face-lift.’ Parents and teachers couldn’t fail to notice long light scars behind his ears. A few years into his tenure, he showed up to a parents’ meeting with small bruises around both eyes. He said he had been boxing, but people in Roslyn know an eye tuck when they see one.”

3) The character of Rachel Bhagavra is a composite of the Hilltop Beacon ‘s staff. 

One of the most shocking aspects of the scandal, as depicted by Bad Education,  is that it was uncovered not by the mainstream press, but by a high school newspaper — specifically, one dogged student journalist (Viswanathan) at the  Hilltop Beacon,  who breaks the story despite being discouraged by the paper’s senior staff and by Tassone himself.

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It’s absolutely true that the student newspaper the  Hilltop Beacon  broke the story, which was later picked up nationwide. But Bjahavra herself is not based on a real person, screenwriter Mike Magovsky told Slate , referring to her as “a part composite, part invention meant to be an audience surrogate who is finding out information with us.” She appears to be in part based on Rebekah Rombom, then-editor-in-chief of the  Beacon , who wrote an article for the  New York Times  discussing how the paper broke the story.

According to her account, her reporting didn’t arise from being assigned to another “puff piece,” as is depicted in the film; rather, she and her co-editor received a tip that an anonymous letter was floating around accusing a school district employee (later identified as Gluckin) of stealing money. The letter prompted the board of education to call for an emergency meeting, which was attended and reported on by Rombom. “I believe it was inevitable that this story would have surfaced eventually. All we did was push it there a little faster,” she wrote.

4) Tassone was not closeted, nor did he date a former student.

In the movie, Tassone is seen flirting with a Las Vegas bartender named Kyle (Rafael Casal), whom he recognizes as a former student of his. Tassone then has an affair with Kyle, jetting back and forth from New York to Vegas and flying him first-class to London, unbeknownst to his longtime partner Tom (as portrayed by Stephen Spinella, whose name was changed in the film from Steven).

Kyle is actually a fictionalized version of Tassone’s former boyfriend Jason Daughterty, a 32-year-old former exotic dancer with whom Tassone actually purchased a house. He was not Tassone’s former student, and in an interview with the Coach Mike podcast, Tassone seemed to take particular umbrage with that aspect of the film’s portrayal. He also took issue with the fact that the film portrayed him as closeted, going to great lengths to conceal his sexual orientation by keeping a photo of his deceased wife on his desk. (He also denies that his partner didn’t know about his boyfriend and that he had an open marriage.)

“I’m not ashamed of being a gay man, and again, they made it seem somewhat sordid,” Tassone said. “That bothered me and upset me when the detective questioned [husband] Steven, and he implied that Steven didn’t even know I was married. That was not the case. And I don’t understand why they had to bring my sexuality into the film.”

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Bad Education

Pushy parents basking in the reflected glory of driving their kids toward extreme excellence is not exactly a new phenomenon. Long before the college admissions scandal that brought down corporate executives and Hollywood stars alike, the pursuit of academic superiority—real or imagined—has inspired perfectly sensible people to go to insane lengths. The right neighborhood with the right schools, a packed schedule of the right kinds of activities and athletics—it's all to achieve the greater goal of sending their children to the right Ivy League university which will prepare them for the right lucrative career.

The top administrators at the Roslyn, New York, school district seemed not only to understand this instinct but also to exploit it for their own personal gain. " Bad Education " explores their real-life embezzlement scheme, which came crashing down when the high-school newspaper broke the story in 2004. Spending nearly $8 million on a sky bridge to beautify a campus seems reasonable when you're trying to exude an aura of success—when you're the fourth-ranked district in the country, gunning for that No. 1 spot. With that much money flying around, skimming a little here and there for a bagel or jewelry or renovations on your beach house in the Hamptons is no biggie.

Director Cory Finley finds the dark humor within this scandal, which he depicts with wit, style and a terrific cast. Hugh Jackman does some of the best work of his long and varied career as the superintendent, Dr. Frank Tassone, whose charisma and polished image disguised a multitude of secrets. Jackman plays on his usual charm and looks to great effect. But there's something sinister within the slickness that's unsettling from the first time we see him, spritzing cologne and trimming nose hairs in the mirror of the boys' bathroom in extreme close-up. Frank clearly cares deeply and works hard to recall names and personal details of students and parents alike throughout the district; we can still see glimmers of the calling that drew him to this challenging profession in the first place. Fundamentally, he's a pleaser and he wants to be liked—yet increasingly, he savors the fame and power that come with being in a position of authority in an affluent community. And as Frank and his second-in-command (played brilliantly by a brash Allison Janney ) find themselves squirming to survive when their $11.2 million scheme comes to light, their flaws and follies become even more glaringly evident.

Finley's follow-up to " Thoroughbreds ," one of my favorite films of 2018, doesn't seek to dazzle with sleek, showy camerawork like that film did. But it's similarly interested in mining the depths of out darkest impulses, and doing so with sharp satire. ( Mike Makowsky , who was a middle school student in Roslyn when the embezzlement scandal broke, wrote the script.) "Bad Education" also calls to mind the great Alexander Payne film " Election ," with its students who are smarter and savvier than you'd expect and teachers who aren't as mature and responsible as you'd hope. Finley actually could have used a bit more of Payne's sharp bite in tackling this material. Geraldine Viswanathan radiates a quiet but increasingly assertive confidence as the high school reporter whose tough questions and thorough document searches reveal the district's financial irregularities. Just as compelling as what she finds is her internal debate over how to handle that information. She knows what's the right thing to do—but what if that's the wrong move for her future?

That's the dilemma that also plagues the school board members—led by a vividly haggard Ray Romano —when they first learn of the administrators' indiscretions. Going public would not only jeopardize the standing of the school district nationwide, it also would damage its reputation locally, which would make it harder for high-school seniors to gain acceptance at top universities, which would cause property values to plummet.

For a long time, Jackman keeps us guessing as to the amount of Frank's knowledge and the depth of his involvement. Janney's Pam Gluckin chats casually about flagrant misuse of her district credit card over the buzz of the blender as she mixes margaritas. (And the film's costume and production design find just the right amount of Long Island tacky and flashy without diving over the top into parody.) Frank, on the other hand, contains myriad, fascinating multitudes. As Jackman gets older, he seems less interested in getting us to like him and more inclined to play complicated characters who make questionable decisions. Wildly violent as his Wolverine may be in the " X-Men " universe—particularly in the excellent, standalone " Logan "—he's still essentially a hero. "Bad Education" gives him the chance to play someone who may be doing some truly bad things, and you can tell he's really sinking his claws into the role this time.

Premieres on HBO on Saturday, 4/25.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Hugh Jackman as Frank Tassone
• Allison Janney as Pam Gluckin
• Ray Romano as Bob Spicer
• Alex Wolff as Nick Fleischman
• Geraldine Viswanathan as Rachel Kellog
• Cory Finley
• Louise Ford

Cinematographer

• Lyle Vincent
• Michael Abels
• Mike Makowsky

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The True Story Behind HBO’s Bad Education

HBO’s Bad Education tells the wild tale of former Roslyn schools superintendent Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman), a beloved educator who hoodwinked a tony Long Island town to the tune of $11.2 million over a dozen years. Based on a true story reported in New York Magazine and adapted by screenwriter Mike Makowsky, who was a Roslyn middle-schooler when the scandal broke, the film rollickingly details Tassone’s duplicitous double life.

While elevating the affluent North Shore enclave’s public school system into one of America’s best, Tassone and his larcenous accomplice, school business administrator Pamela Gluckin (Allison Janney), were embezzling millions — taking more than $1 million in cash withdrawals and buying homes, luxury vacations, high-end cars, boats, jewelry, and artwork. After Gluckin was caught, Tassone finessed her quiet firing to save his own face-lifted skin. It was only after a local student reporter began digging into the real reason for Gluckin’s dismissal that the town learned what had been going on.

But to what degree is the film’s story true? Using the original New York account plus subsequent reporting, including the New York State comptroller’s audit — which could only account for about $7 million of the missing money — here’s a character-by-character guide to instruct you.

Hugh Jackman as Frank Tassone

Like Hugh Jackman’s would-be widower, the real Tassone — a double master’s- and doctorate-degreed Bronx native — worked diligently for a community whose sense of entitlement is as inflated as the prices at the Kitchen Kabaret store we see as Bad Education opens. Deciding his worth was as high as those he served, Tassone helped himself to $2.2 million for rent on an Upper East Side apartment he shared with his longtime partner, Stephen Signorelli, a country home, trips, parking garages, and dry cleaning, among other expenses. He also owned a Las Vegas home that he shared with a second boyfriend, Jason Daugherty (who inspired the film’s Kyle Contreras character, played by Rafael Casal). As Bad Education notes, Tassone still draws a pension of $174,035 , even after pleading guilty to grand larceny and serving about three years of his four- to 12-year prison sentence. Tassone returned $1.9 million in 2006 and promised to repay the rest. He was released from jail in 2010.

Allison Janney as Pamela Gluckin

Like her real-life counterpart, Allison Janney’s affable school administrator earned about $160,000 annually and was brazen enough to drive a car with personalized “DUNENUTN” plates — a nod to the West Hampton beach house the district unknowingly paid for. As in the film, $223,000 of Gluckin’s bills, including for her son’s building supplies, led to her dismissal and relinquishing of her administrator’s license in 2002. Arrested in 2005, Gluckin admitted in 2006 to absconding with $4.3 million for a lavish lifestyle that included two more district-funded homes in Bellmore, New York, and Hobe Sound, Florida. She ultimately struck a plea deal, got a three- to nine-year sentence , and spent nearly five years behind bars while still drawing her annual $54,998 pension (half of it went to Roslyn’s restitution). According to HBO, Gluckin died in 2017.

Ray Romano as Bob Spicer

Spicer, a local real-estate agent and big Tassone booster, is a fictitious stand-in for the community at large. In a place where appearance is everything, Spicer is blinded by Roslyn students’ increased acceptance to top-tier colleges — and the soaring real-estate prices that benefitted the town’s bottom line, a.k.a. higher taxes! William Costigan, whom the New York Times described as “a close ally of Tassone’s,” was school board president in 2005, when a new assistant superintendent began discovering the true depths of Gluckin’s scamming.

Annaleigh Ashford as Jenny Aquila

Though Bad Education gives her a different name, Gluckin really did install her niece Debra Rigano as a district clerk — even bestowing a salary beyond what was budgeted. One of the younger Rigano’s responsibilities was arranging school board members’ trips to conferences, including Tassone’s boondoggles. Her freelance work as a travel agent garnered her commissions on the district trips she booked. Jenny’s petty video-game and Macy’s and Lord and Taylor purchases pale in comparison with the approximately $780,000 that Rigano ultimately admitted to stealing. After cooperating with prosecutors, she was sentenced to two to six years in jail.

Geraldine Viswanathan as Rachel Bhargava

Bhargava is a stand-in for real student-reporter Rebekah Rombom, one of two editors-in-chief of the high school paper The Hilltop Beacon. Rather than a puff piece evolving into the scoop we see in the film, a tip led to Rombom breaking the story about the real reason for Gluckin’s 2002 exit, though she wasn’t allowed to print her name. She likely obtained the information from a 2004 anonymous letter that began circulating and for which Tassone tried to do damage control. Once the Beacon story broke, Newsday and other newspapers began digging into the scandal that became the biggest school fraud case in the country .

Jeremy Shamos as Phil Metzger

Like Metzger in the film, a real Roslyn accountant named Andrew Miller conducted an audit and found about $250,000 went to Gluckin’s profligate spending. As with Metzger, the auditor let the crime go unreported and was brought back at Tassone’s urging years later after the D.A. got involved. Miller was ultimately charged with cooking the books to conceal millions of missing taxpayer money. He pleaded guilty to a felony and received a four-month sentence and 18 months probation.

Stephen Spinella as Thomas Tuggiero

The loyal Tuggiero hews closely to Tassone’s real domestic partner, Stephen Signorelli. The computer consultant was listed as the CEO of a company that submitted fake printing invoices for over $500,000, more than $200,000 of which he passed on to Tassone. Signorelli pleaded guilty to grand larceny in 2006 and was set to serve at least a year of his one- to three-year prison sentence.

Jimmy Tatro as Jimmy McCarden

The parallels between Jimmy Tatro’s construction contractor and Gluckin’s real son John McCormick are pretty accurate. McCormick’s home-center spending spree was indeed what led to the unraveling of his mother’s scamming in 2002. But rather than a tip from the cousin of the school board president’s wife as the film depicts, it was an eagle-eyed Home Depot salesperson who noticed McCormick was using a Roslyn district credit card. In 2006, McCormick was sentenced to five years of probation and 100 hours of community service for stealing $83,000. Were it not for that imprudent act, who knows how long Tassone’s and Gluckin’s greed could have continued undetected?

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