Gettin' Schooled

By Scott Smith in News on Sep 12, 2005 4:59PM

Chicagoist is kind of a nerd, so the underlying theme for this story saddens us a little, but at least the news is encouraging. Chicago Public Schools reported that its one-year dropout rate fell to 10.2% in the 2004-5 school year, down from 11.9% the year before. This comes on the heels of more good school news from last week, that 92% of schoolchildren showed up on the first day of classes. CPS CEO Arne Duncan was heartened, but said, "There is no such thing as an acceptable dropout rate." No high school diploma these days spells social and economic doom, he says, unlike 30 or 40 years ago when dropouts could still get a job chipping slag out of a 200-degree blast furnace at the steel mills or conking livestock on the head with a sledgehammer at the stockyards (oh, for the days when that was considered a good job).

Officials credit more alternative schools and increased peer support for the lower dropout rate. As for getting the little ones to school on the first day, they basically pestered the hell out of their parents. But with that stick comes the carrot: CPS plans to offer prizes for attendance throughout the school year, including iPods, $500 from Jewel, a month's rent or mortgage payment, and a family vacation. Chicagoist only got a crappy certificate and some Donald Duck stickers for our perfect attendance, but then again we always had the reassurance of that job slopping hogs if we decided to skip a few days.

Chicagoist is all for incentives to make kids enjoy school, but how about less bribery and a little more encouragement, say like making the "school" part of school more fun? We don't know, maybe pay the teachers a little more, buy some computers, fix up the classrooms, or dare we say, spend less time on standardized testing so that our kids learn how to do long division instead of how to fill in circles on a Scan-tron sheet. A personal attention goes a long way we say. But then again, free iPods are sweet too.

Thanks, Matt!