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”
