Milwaukee Closes Two Grade Levels in school, Parents Scramble to Choose another school by Monday. This is "Choice?"

Instead of injecting “certainty” and quality into our schools, we’re spinning our wheels trying to give parents school choice...more options. Parents may know their kids well, but they don’t know the educational system, the improvements since they were in school, and the decades of fine tuning the teaching profession has made that may be on the brink of succeeding.

   

Vilifying the teaching profession, and turning it into just another low paying job, is starting to trash a system most parents could count on. And it looks like we’re chasing quality instructors away, while adding to the stress level of parents who suddenly have to find another school by default, and not by "choice:"

jsonline: Gregoria Ham, a freshman at Northwest Secondary School, tried out for the cheerleading team Monday. On Thursday, she learned that she lost out by default: Milwaukee Public Schools has ordered the removal of the ninth and 10th grades at the school. Ham and about 400 other students have to find a new school by Monday.

The unusual development was confirmed by MPS officials Thursday, who said the district is removing freshmen and sophomores … because it can't find enough certified staff to teach there, especially in math and science. The school has been operating with a series of substitute teachers since the beginning of the school year, according to the district …

I’ve mentioned this many times; the choice process isn’t. The best schools will fill fast and have waiting lists, leaving the remaining students to attend schools that pick up the slack. What a improvement?

During the district's three-choice selection process, she (Gregoria Ham) listed Reagan High School and Hamilton High School as her first choices, but ended up being sent to Bay View. She and her mom didn't like the reputation of that school, so she ended up at Northwest, where she has a cousin. Ham said she keeps a 4.0 GPA and has aspirations of going to college at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She lives on the south side and wants to go to Reagan for its college-prep program, but she's on the wait list.

This is “choice” folks, and a level of chaos that will only get worse.