By Alex Abbeduto, Hannah Meisel, and Cole Longcor Governor JB Pritzker’s plan to create a new State agency to oversee Illinois’ various early childhood programs moved forward Friday, April 12 after the State Senate’s unanimous approval. It was one of 244 bills that cleared the Senate last week. Early childhood...
By Erika Hunt and Lisa Hood,Regional Office of Education #17 The “State of Our Educator Pipeline 2023” report by Advance Illinois underscores the challenges in Illinois’ education system and the urgent need to address the teacher shortage comprehensively. While recruiting more teachers is important, addressing teacher attrition, responsible for 90%...
By Peter Hancock Elementary and secondary students in Illinois showed consistent improvements in their reading and math scores while the State’s high school graduation rate reached a 13-year high for the most recently concluded school year. Those are some of the conclusions from the most recent annual statewide school report...
Of all of the aspects of American society which have not successfully made a transition into the 21st Century, education tops the list. It continues to be bogged down by a 19-Century structure, and any progressive changes move at a snail’s pace. Our schools are in a state of decay...
By Peter Hancock The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) announced Tuesday, Jan. 31 that Elgin-based School District U-46 superintendent Tony Sanders will become the next State superintendent of education. Sanders, 53, will succeed Carmen Ayala, who announced in November 2022 that she would retire effective January 31. ISBE reported...
Shootings such as at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas last week and threats aimed at other educational sites confirm that school can be a treacherous place. In many cases, school safety conjures up intervention. However, Dr. Robert Renteria said prevention is the key to safety, his publicist announced recently. For...
The following article, with four vignettes regarding back to school comments, was published in the March 9 issue of The New York Times with an update April 3 on children’s return to school. The article was written by Ellen Almer Durston, Dan Levin, and Juliana Kim. • “Credit…Lucy Hewett for...
More than 10,000 literacy packets have been created by the Aurora Public Library District Foundation (APLDF) and distributed through preschools and food pantries in Aurora such as the Marie Wilkinson Food Pantry (MWFP) and the Marie Wilkinson Child Development Center since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The idea to...
By Jerry Nowicki Governor JB Pritzker said he will consider ideas for directing hundreds of millions of new dollars toward K-12 education in the upcoming fiscal year, but proponents of such spending must offer ways to cut government spending, or raise necessary revenues elsewhere. He made those comments in an...
I had lunch last week with two civic leaders in their handsome, small, city in central Illinois. Both had moved to their present town for family reasons, after careers in other states. They are both concerned about the averageness of their community’s high school. One is a successful, retired school...
By David W. Tretter Never has the danger of election cycles and political expediency been more apparent, or more threatening, for higher education in Illinois than it is right now. Many legislators are serious about creating balanced budgets, embracing long-term planning and helping provide concrete-funding commitments for our most valuable,...
As Aurora families make decisions on the best options for returning to school this Fall, they can weigh-in on how the City government of Aurora can better serve students communitywide. The City of Aurora Youth Service Division has launched a survey to gather input from students and adults about the...
By Peter Hancock One of the State’s largest teachers’ unions said Monday that most schools in Illinois are not yet ready to reopen for in-person teaching in the fall and it urged schools to continue operating remotely until the safety of students, teachers, and staff members can be assured. “At...
Members of the Illinois Retired Teachers Association, a statewide association of retired educators, their families and supporters, are volunteering to help students finish the school year at home. “We want to help students learn,” IRTA president John Flaherty, a former high school and special education teacher, wrote in a news...
We’ve been told that there are two things we cannot avoid: Death and taxes! I guess that is still true. But now we are facing another challenge: COVID-19 (coronavirus). And we’re not sure how to avoid it. This virus can affect our entire planet and cause health issues and even...
By Peter Hancock One day after delivering his budget proposal to the General Assembly in Springfield, Democratic governor JB Pritzker was in Chicago Thursday, Feb. 20 to round up support for his proposed increases in higher education funding. Speaking at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Pritzker highlighted his proposal...
By Jim Nowlan In a recent column, I noted that most, not all, downstate school districts perform below statewide averages on 11th-grade English and math tests. I didn’t blame anyone, instead noted that performance is directly correlated to the household incomes within each district; the lower the average incomes, the...
By Jim Nowlan For millennia, war was how groups did economic development. Today, economic and technical dominance are how groups do war, and right now we’re losing something akin to a modern war with China. When I first arrived in Shanghai 15 years ago, to serve as a “foreign expert”...
