Chicago Kids, Online, at School, Staying Late?

by Collin Hitt Chicago Public Schools has announced that it is moving forward with a new plan to extend the school day at select elementary schools by using online learning technology.  The Trib carried the story: In an effort to extend what is one of the nation’s shortest school days, Chicago Public Schools plans to add...

by Collin Hitt

Chicago Public Schools has announced that it is moving forward with a new plan to extend the school day at select elementary schools by using online learning technology.  The Trib carried the story:

In an effort to extend what is one of the nation’s shortest school days, Chicago Public Schools plans to add 90 minutes to the schedules of 15 elementary schools using online courses and nonteachers, sources said.

By employing nonteachers at a minimal cost to oversee the students, the district can save money and get around the teachers’ contract, which limits the length of the school day.

Details of the plan first surfaced in a Sun Times report earlier this summer. The district has obviously scaled the effort down from its original scope, at least in the project’s first year. The plan reported on by the Sun Times would have covered 100 schools and extended the day by two hours.

In all, this is a positive development. Chicago has one of the shortest school days and school years in the Western world. At district-run schools, the administrative and pedagogical approach in many, perhaps most, ways has remained the same over the past 30 years.  Online learning changes that – it provides for more instructional time in an environment that adapts to the needs of each individual student.

If in fact this new online learning initiative reaches the scale of 100 schools – or even every school in the district – it will be the most significant change to public education in Chicago since charter schools began arriving on the scene in the min-nineties.