Chicago Details 6-year Tech High Schools

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.360-edu.com/news/chicago-details-6-year-tech-high-schools.htm

article by James Dugan | February 29, 2012

Late last year, Chicago public schools announced plans to introduce five schools that would offer 6-year technology programs that would have students graduating with an associate’s degree in technology fields. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced, Tuesday, details concerning these five schools, including where they will be and which companies will be partnering with the schools.

IBM, Motorola Solutions, Microsoft, Cisco and Verizon will each partner with a high school in creating a curriculum that focuses on math, science, technology and engineering. Mayor Emanuel explained that he reached out to these individual companies.

“They have a shortage of workers. We have a student population ready to fill those jobs if they have the educational opportunities to do it,” Emanuel said at an event announcing the new program.

Each of these tech-firms will closely work with the schools to create a curriculum tailored toward getting students the experience needed to get competitive jobs in the field.

[denverbill]

1. While I generally find little to like about education reform,

this actually sounds like a pretty decent idea.

[marlakay]

2. First decent thing Rahm has done in awhile

good to see.

[EC]

3. I agrree with the rest here

this is a good idea. We have one here and it does attrack many students. But it is still a regular HS that has tech programs.

[exboyfil]

4. What I find interesting is the number of college

bound students involved with our High School's robotics team. Many of them are going on to engineering school, but they would not think to take one of our votech options at the high school (except for Project Lead the Way classes).

I never thought to take votech in High School even though I would have benefitted from the experience in college. Which would be better as an engineer - a votech class or music or journalism?

[eppur_se_muova]

5. While I believe we do need more tech schools, I am pessimistic about ...

these being so closely tied to corporations. The OP makes it sound like a strict one-to-one correspondence -- one school, one company. If so, that's an open invitation to abuse, and pretty close to public underwriting of these companies. Better if all participating corps were equally connected to all participating schools, or "separate but unequal" feeder schools are inevitable. Graduates may find theselves well prepared to go to work for the sponsoring employer -- under whatever terms the corp finds appropriate (can you say "unpaid internship"?) -- but not prepared for much else.

Why aren't there any skeptics involved in planning these things ?