CPS Takes the Blue Pill
By Matt Wood in News on Jan 26, 2006 8:15PM
CPS is on fire when it comes to making the news lately. Today they announced that they are closing three underperforming grade schools and one high school. The roughly 1,000 students at Farren, Frazier, and Morse grade schools will be shifted to other, better-off schools in their respective areas, while Collins High School will stop accepting incoming freshmen and close its doors in three years. The closings are part of the CPS Renaissance 2010 Program, brought to you by No Child Left Behind (TM). CPS plans to close schools deemed "chronically underperforming" by NCLB rules and open 100 new ones by 2010.
One of those new schools will be an online school, the Chicago Virtual Charter School, the state's first online public school. Up to 600 K-8 students will get a computer and a packet of course materials so they can login to school every day and avoid all that icky social interaction. The Sun-Times article didn't give details on the technology behind the school, but if it's anything like most school computer labs, Chicagoist is sure it will be a stellar learning experience.
Supporters of the virtual school say it's a great option for students who are homebound, have been expelled from school, or who have trouble learning in regular classrooms. Call us old-fashioned but we thought that's why we pay all that tax money for special education programs. Also, isn't the biggest part of grade school really socializing the children? At that age, we learned more about life on the playground than we ever did in the classroom. Instead, CPS wants to park kids in front of the otherworldly glow of the Matrix all day. We snarl at anyone opens the door to our windowless, darkened closet at the Chicagoist offices, shielding our eyes from the harsh glare of reality as they pull the probe out of the back of our skull. We can't imagine what we'd be like if we'd gone to grade school that way.
The Chicago Teachers Union of course is apoplectic over all this news. This hasn't exactly been a good week for them. Expect headlines next week of union president Marilyn Stewart holding Arne Duncan hostage and taking away his recess.