It Should Get Pretty Interesting!

In a short 13 days the Chicago Board of Education will take an important vote on closing some schools and 'turning around' others. Obviously, no matter the city or locale, such a vote, and outcome, is very painful.

Plenty of schools, though they may be failing according to district and state standards, really do their best to succeed. Such is the case with some of the schools that CPS is likely to take action on at its February 22nd Board meeting.

To give you a small sample of the consternation that the February vote is engendering, the Chicago Teachers Union has filed a lawsuit to stop the vote. The CTU isn't merely trying to protect jobs, they are interested in keeping schools open that serve their neighborhoods well.

This point shouldn't be ignored by the Board of Education. School, staff, administration, and neighborhood stability are needed in Chicago. Take Fuller Elementary for example. Ms. Young has been there for 10 months and the CPS wants to let her go! Seriously, how is one suppose to effect real change in 10 months?! It won't happen by firing the entire staff.

One of the reasons I keep putting ISAT scores on this blog is to indicate the extent to which a number of 'low performing' schools are making progress. Granted, the progess may be slow but overcoming years of low performance, constantly shifting populations, poverty, instability caused by closing one school and sending students to a new one, neighborhood blight and the like will take monumental efforts by everyone concerned.

Let's hope the CPS Board of Education takes a look at individuals, individual school circumstances, and the various neighborhoods and doesn't simply try to address all problems by a single brush stroke.

Thanks,
Dick