Looking back on my middle and high school years, Internet filters seemed more a way to prevent students from being distracted from their schoolwork by social networking sites, and less a way to protect them from indecent or obsence material on the web. When students around me would complain about the filters, it was always about not being able to access MySpace - not an X-rated porn site.
In this way, the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) seemed to be serving another purpose - promoting schoolwork in place of web surfing - instead of blocking inappropriate content. This may or may not have been intentional in the schools I attended.
To really try blocking all inappropriate online content, a social networking site like MySpace would have to be blocked because the school administrators wouldn't want to be held responsible for the inappropriate content that any user could upload to his or her page. On the other hand, CIPA seems a very convenient excuse to get students off their friends' profile pages and onto their homework assignments.
Despite this secondary (and annoying) purpose that CIPA apparently served during my middle and high school years, I don't feel that filters need to be removed from schools, or that they're a threat to free expression. I don't strongly support them because the filters on school computers can only do so much; they cannot stop a child from viewing whatever he or she wants to in the privacy of home. However, while a child is in school, the primary focus there should be schoolwork, regardless of whether the other content the child wants to look up is appropriate or not.
Using the filters is kind of like having an annoying teacher hovering over your shoulder the whole time you work, ensuring that you don't stray from your assignment. But since kids are generally 'free' to surf the web as they like at home, I don't really find a problem with this.
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