When Bad Copy Happens to Good Schools

Sometime in July -- I can't remember the exact date -- I will have lived in Chicago for 20 years. Like many American cities, Chicago has drastically changed over the last decade. I live in the South Loop, and it's safe to say that as few as 10 years ago there were very few people living down here. Even the hookers and the crack heads didn't live here; this was just their playground. Certainly, no one was sending their kids to a magnet school on the near South Side.

It's now a different story. New construction cranes sprout from the ground every few weeks and if the housing bubble has indeed burst, that news has been slow to reach us. Builders can't build fast enough, and the neighborhood's magnet school "...possess(es) some of the highest sets of test scores in the city" and is known for "being the most difficult school for eighth graders to be enrolled into with approximately 31 incoming freshmen battling for every one seat in the school." Indeed, Jones College Prep has a great reputation in the neighborhood and beyond.

But you wouldn't necessarily know this if you strolled by the school and saw this:


I was really hoping that "competent" had a secret meaning -- you know, not the first or second definition in the dictionary, but the one buried way down deep, the one marked "archaic," the one that means "our graduates will laugh at your freshman requirements on their way to organic chemistry." But of course there's no such meaning. It means what you think it does: adequate but not exceptional.

I have no idea how much Chicago Public Schools spend on creative services, but I know what I want the answer to be: $0. I am hoping, but do not know as fact, that creative agencies here in Chicago do pro bono work for the Chicago Public Schools. If not, it's time, and I'm sure there are folks who would give a few of their summer-Friday hours back for a good cause. Jones College Prep is that good cause, and man, do they need the help.