Chicago's mass school closings
December 13, 2018 8:41 AM   Subscribe

A Generation of School Closings. Since 2002, Chicago has closed or radically shaken up 200 public schools. Public radio station WBEZ takes a look at who the shakeup helped, who it hurt, and where the city’s schools stand now.

(Previously: 1, 2)
posted by goatdog (5 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
I going to guess that, for “who it hurt,” the answer will be “black students.”
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:26 AM on December 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


And "who it helped" was clearly the administrators who cheaped out on education to make a "savings" to taxpayers. And corporations who probably made some buck on privatization.
posted by symbioid at 10:14 AM on December 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


Sadly, on reading, my prediction was quite accurate and, if anything, worse than I’d imagined.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:35 AM on December 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Ewing, quoted in the article, is fantastic and has a book out on this very topic, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side. I haven't read it yet, but I've been going through all her talks and it's just absolutely heartbreaking, clearly racist, and old:

I talk in the book about double shift schedules— some of you in the audience may remember this or have experienced this— CPS schools for black children were so crowded that they would have kids attend school for half the day, go home, and the other half of the kids come for the second half of the day. So if you grew up in Chicago in the 1960s or 50s and you're black, you may have had half the instructional time as your white peers in other parts of the city.

- Eve Ewing: Ghosts in the Schoolyard (YouTube)
posted by yaymukund at 3:04 PM on December 13, 2018 [4 favorites]


No surprises here. The City's commitment to public education died years before it started closing schools.

I was seriously committed to sending my kids to public schools and also seriously committed to remaining in the city. Almost 20 years later, I truly regret sticking with CPS for 6 god awful years.

The proverbial last straw: at yet another meeting with my 5th grader's teachers and the coordinator for the school gifted program, one of the teachers complained that my daughter "just didn't seem concerned about her future" and all around the table heads nodded in agreement.

I was floored. I said, "She's 10. She's not capable of being concerned about her furture." Although the program coordinator agreed with me, I just couldn't see the point of continuing to deal with these people. Note: earlier that afternoon, that same teacher led a quiz game in the classroom re China, each question began with"Confucius say", delivered with a stereotypical "Chinese" accent.

That day was just one of oh-so-many wtf experiences. A year later, we were in Oak Park.
posted by she's not there at 10:46 PM on December 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


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