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Chi-Town Daily News Adds City Colleges Coverage
CTDN keeps expanding its schools coverage, which now includes fulltime coverage of higher ed from a staff reporter, Peter Sachs, as well as freelance K12 coverage by Jay Field (formerly of WBEZ) and others.
Sachs is focusing on City Colleges, an under-covered beat if there ever was one -- and relevant to CPS since so many CPS kids end up going to (but not graduating from) the CCC system.
How important is City Colleges to the success of CPS, do you think? Are there lots of CCC-educated staff in CPS these days? Do CPS kids who enter the CCC system ever make it out? Do you think CTDN can ever send as many readers over here as D299 sends over there?
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Fri Feb 13, 2009 at 4:39 PM
Chi-Town Daily News Adds City Colleges Coverage
CCC take CPS graduates with disabilities. In fact for many of these graduates it is there only option because they have such low ACT scores. But the joke is on them, CCC never allows them into real college level classes for the most part. In general they take 00-classes which they are required to pass before entering regular college classes. Most fail these classes and drop out after one year.
CCC has repeatedly cut its special services budget and provides very little support for these students. Harold Washington does the best job and even there most students with disabilities do not survive. If a CPS student has an ACT score of 15 or lower and a disability they are wasting there time even going to CCC. But no one at CPS has the guts to tell either the kids or their parents this truth, they just keep telling the kids how they beat the odds and graduated, now go to college.
CCC has repeatedly cut its special services budget and provides very little support for these students. Harold Washington does the best job and even there most students with disabilities do not survive. If a CPS student has an ACT score of 15 or lower and a disability they are wasting there time even going to CCC. But no one at CPS has the guts to tell either the kids or their parents this truth, they just keep telling the kids how they beat the odds and graduated, now go to college.
Fri Feb 13, 2009 at 7:25 PM
Chi-Town Daily News Adds City Colleges Coverage
so, what is the answer? Do you think that a college degree for everyone is feasible? If you can't score a 15 on the ACT, what are the chances that you can actually handle college course work?
If the schools did cater to the sub-15 crowd, what jobs would they be eligible for? How could they compete with students from a different college or university with much higher standards?
At some point, you have to ask, "what is the point?" Shouldn't we concentrate on making sure that students learn 'basic skills' before they leave high school?
We often give short shift to the trades. We need well-trained and educated tradespeople more than we need everyone to have a college degree.
If a huge portion of the population has a college degree, then the low-end degrees will become useless. One time, one of my ed school professors took it as far as to argue that someone with downs syndrome should have the resources in place so that they could complete law school if they wanted to.
If the city colleges are going to be relevent, they need to hold students to a high standard so that it actually means something to have a degree.
If the schools did cater to the sub-15 crowd, what jobs would they be eligible for? How could they compete with students from a different college or university with much higher standards?
At some point, you have to ask, "what is the point?" Shouldn't we concentrate on making sure that students learn 'basic skills' before they leave high school?
We often give short shift to the trades. We need well-trained and educated tradespeople more than we need everyone to have a college degree.
If a huge portion of the population has a college degree, then the low-end degrees will become useless. One time, one of my ed school professors took it as far as to argue that someone with downs syndrome should have the resources in place so that they could complete law school if they wanted to.
If the city colleges are going to be relevent, they need to hold students to a high standard so that it actually means something to have a degree.
Sun Feb 15, 2009 at 11:38 AM
Chi-Town Daily News Adds City Colleges Coverage
posting this because it's short:
"Reporting worth reporting"
by Michael Miner at 12:21 p.m.
I've heard twice from Geoff Dougherty in the last few days, each time calling my attention to a story posted on the Web site he runs, the Chi-Town Daily News. Both stories were by education reporter Peter Sachs, a new hire paid out of the $150,000 Dougherty received in December in grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Abra Prentice Foundation.
Sachs's first story reported that trustees of the City Colleges of Chicago were about to vote a second time on a 10 percent tuition increase, the first vote in December being arguably illegal because the public hadn't been properly notified. The second story said City Colleges is running a debit card program that might violate federal policies because students using the cards are charged withdrawal fees.
There's a phrase for reporting such as this: Sachs wrote two "nice little stories." He didn't set the world on fire but each story deserved to be told; and Sachs has made it clear to the City Colleges' board of trustees, a somewhat obscure public body, that it's being watched. Beat reporters used to publish a lot of nice little local stories in our daily papers. Now, not so many.
Not-for-profit, grant-driven operations like the Chi-Town Daily News are one idea of what the future of American journalism might look like. Maybe it's a model that will never do more than fill a niche, but it's an important niche.
"Reporting worth reporting"
by Michael Miner at 12:21 p.m.
I've heard twice from Geoff Dougherty in the last few days, each time calling my attention to a story posted on the Web site he runs, the Chi-Town Daily News. Both stories were by education reporter Peter Sachs, a new hire paid out of the $150,000 Dougherty received in December in grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Abra Prentice Foundation.
Sachs's first story reported that trustees of the City Colleges of Chicago were about to vote a second time on a 10 percent tuition increase, the first vote in December being arguably illegal because the public hadn't been properly notified. The second story said City Colleges is running a debit card program that might violate federal policies because students using the cards are charged withdrawal fees.
There's a phrase for reporting such as this: Sachs wrote two "nice little stories." He didn't set the world on fire but each story deserved to be told; and Sachs has made it clear to the City Colleges' board of trustees, a somewhat obscure public body, that it's being watched. Beat reporters used to publish a lot of nice little local stories in our daily papers. Now, not so many.
Not-for-profit, grant-driven operations like the Chi-Town Daily News are one idea of what the future of American journalism might look like. Maybe it's a model that will never do more than fill a niche, but it's an important niche.
