Remembering Metro, the school without walls
Metro was fondly referred to as “the school without walls,” and the city was its classroom. Derived from the radical concept that students should take responsibility for their own education and that urban institutions and businesses represented countless and varied opportunities for educational enrichment, the Chicago Public High School for Metropolitan Study, or “Metro,” was unique in the CPS system and the school was under fire from the Chicago Board of Education almost as soon as classes began in 1970. As I recall, Metro was ultimately closed and absorbed into Crane High School in 1991, which is now being closed and turned into a charter schools. And so it goes in Chicago's version of school reform.
The late, great Chicago educator, researchers and schools activist,Don Moore, then a Harvard doc student, was part of the Metro planning team.
Paula Baron, one of Metro’s history teachers, brings the school’s