Reply #38: I believe in public education. [View All]

[apnu]

And our family is atheist (well actually I'm an apathist, I don't give a hoot what someone's god thinks of me) and parochial school repels me on several levels. The voucher idea is political theater and, again, isn't a serious solution to a serious problem. The voucher proposals are as junky as Ryan's voucher program for Medicade and Medicare. Its a giveaway to the private institutions and is meant to destroy public schools.

Our family is doing the best it can with what it can afford. We hand-picked our neighborhood because the CPS school gets good marks (such as that is) and its considered one of the "good" schools. That way our child has, at least, a chance. Sadly, the high school is awful and has been that way for decades so we'll have to figure something out when that time comes. It costs us quite a lot in housing to live there, but we stay because of the school.

All the other "good" schools in the city are, either, as expensive as a private college program, or have a wait list that is years long, just to get into a lottery for a handful of spots, which you can do at any school in CPS. My kid's school, for example, has a three year wait-list to go on the lottery list, and for the last two years they have had no extra slots for kids, out of district, to get in so they didn't have any drawings. So even with vouchers, our choices are limited because the good schools already have wait-lists to get in. And then there are the religious schools that are more affordable than the secular private schools, but we're against indoctrinating our child into a religion.

Chicago has serious educational problems, much like the rest of the country. The system is a sea of waste and graft, but the alternatives are just as bad or worse. I know many good teachers toiling away in CPS and they are dedicated to their jobs and the kids, but the administrators are awful. At my child's school the principle moves around and the teachers all treat her like a queen, its creepy. I'd give her a score of 65% Again, this is at a "good" school. Thankfully they allow us flexibility on the lunch issue, and took a stand against the mandatory breakfast program that CPS forced on everybody. So the school isn't all bad, but it defiantly has room for a lot of improvement.

This school also has rabid parental support. They raise enough money each year to keep music and art teachers on staff that the school otherwise, could not afford. So that's a big plus. Most other schools are not as lucky.

All the schools in CPS are hit or miss, and seem to be made or broken on community support. The state is broke, the county is broke, and the city is extra-broke and all are corrupt to the core. CPS has been squeezed for resources badly and kids all over the city suffer and its run by political appointees in the grand Chicago tradition. Especially on the South and West sides where the incomes are the lowest and the crime is the highest, you will find the worst schools. Those poor kids have troubles beyond my imagination. The system is so bad out there that all they get is a few hours off the streets and little more. The schools should be giving them an out, a chance, an opportunity to rise above the squalor crime and violence and get out. But CPS can't do that because they don't have the funds and the manpower to affect anything out there.

My wife, who has a teaching degree (along with another one) considered going into the CPS program, but after all the testing and certifications she's have to endure, plus the high costs for those tests and cert and background checks and waiting periods, it would take her close to a year to get in. And then she would not get to pick her first assignment. They'd ship her to the school with the worst assignment until she had seniority to move out and up, and that translates to the worst schools in CPS from what I've been told by other teachers in the system. That is, unless, you know the right people to put a word in, or "take care of" the right people if you don't already know them.

That's a long way of saying the CPS system scares off new teachers and so they have a hiring problem to boot. This affects the quality of the teachers, especially, in the hardest hit areas. They might get a good teacher or two, but not long enough to turn things around.

Its a bad situation here and the fixes are easy to see but hard to implement. CPS needs quality teachers, and quality supplies across the board. CPS also needs to provide adequate security for teachers and students so they can do their jobs, which probably involves CPD who've got tons of different problems. CPS also needs a well rounded education system that is not focused on test taking for NLCB and/or "race to the top" nonsense. CPS needs to see each child as an individual that is part of a whole and part of the community, instead of a bunch of widgets to process and get out so they can process more widgets.

Tackling any of those things is very hard to do and nobody, holding office in Illinois, is serious about these problems. And if there is an exception, there isn't any money to implement these improvements.