Many people in class seemed to find web filters in schools to be an extreme annoyance, preventing them from researching topics that overzealous filters might block, such as abortion. I don't actually have much of an opinion on the subject, as I've never been hampered by internet filters at school, but there are a few points that I feel have been neglected.
First off, it seems to me that schools would be better served by monitoring student use of the internet rather than filtering it. At my high school, all students have their own profiles that are loaded across all the school's computers, so presumably it would be easy enough to see who's accessing what. If student internet history is sifted through, it would be easy to see who is accessing controversial but school-related topics (such as information about abortion) and who is accessing inappropriate content like pornography, and then only put filters on repeat offenders.
However, I think the bigger problem is teachers not being able to access sites that they want to show their students. All teachers in schools need to have the ability to remove the filter. Some of my teachers have permission to disable the filter whenever they want, others have to get permission before class whenever they want to show a YouTube video or other filtered site. CIPA requires that students be allowed to access educational material, and if you can't trust teachers to show educational material then maybe the entire public school system needs to be reevaluated.
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