Education

    As a school superintendent for the past nine years and a history teacher, coach and principal for 15 years prior to becoming a superintendent, I believe I have a good grasp of educational issues here in the 109th district and throughout Illinois. I can tell you that the most important single factor in effective, high-quality education is local control led by caring local leaders. I know the superintendents, administrators and school districts in the 109th district. I know many of the school board members and teachers. This area does an outstanding job of providing a high quality education to their children. Most districts score well above state and national averages on student achievement tests. Many school districts within the 109th are award winners.

    One of the main factors that accounts for this high quality education is the high expectations that our communities have for local schools. This, along with a nurturing home and community environment make this the place I want to raise my children. Our educators care. We involve parents in the education process and we value input from home, business and our wider community. It is a team effort that starts with local effort, control and accountability. The fact is that, despite their best intentions, neither the State government nor the State Board of Education can mandate a good education system locally. More state departments and more state programs will not improve education statewide without local caring, control and accountability. Providing resources and allowing for local flexibility, control and governance is the key.

    One of the most distressing facts about education in Illinois is that in some districts the per pupil spending exceeds $15,000 per student and in some districts less than $5,000 is spent per pupil. This disparity exists mostly because of the way education is funded. Property tax as a major funding source for education in Illinois is part of the problem. It allows wealthy districts to spend large amounts per pupil while districts in poor parts of the state, which actually have greater needs, often have less to spend. The quality of a child's education should not depend so greatly upon where they happen to live. However, the current system of funding public education in Illinois encourages that type of disparity.

    In addition to educational disparity, over reliance on property tax also places an unfair burden on property owners, especially farmers and older people who own property and live on fixed incomes, to fund education locally. Several studies performed by well respected committees from all corners in Illinois have shown that the current funding formula and reliance on property tax to fund education is, at best, unfair and at worst, is likely unconstitutional! These "Blue Ribbon" committees contained people we should listen to. These folks were chosen to study this issue because they are our best and our brightest. The problem was that once this group made their recommendations as to how we should correct the current system, the General Assembly did not act upon the recommendation because of political considerations.

    This is a great challenge for the next General Assembly. The greatest challenge will be acting! Despite the overwhelming agreement that the system needs to be rejuvenated, the General Assembly has not had the courage to take action that will relieve the disparity and reduce our unfair reliance on property owners to fund education. The next General Assembly must have the courage to take on this issue and reform the way public education is funded in Illinois.

    As we attempt to come up with something that we can agree on in terms of funding, we must also face another issue in education. That is, we must truly make education a priority in this state and in our country. A fact that we should be ashamed of is that we spend over $30,000 per year in Illinois to house an inmate in our correctional facilities and we spend less than $10,000 per year on the average to educate each of our children. It costs more to send someone to the state pen than to Penn State ( I would prefer an Illinois school!). We spend three times as much of our precious resources on housing a criminal than caring for the future of our children. We need to "put our money where our mouth is". What would happen if education were ever really, truly made the priority in this state? If the number of "education candidates" ever truly turned out to make education their priority, we could fund education at a priority level and we would have much less of a need to spend millions on prisons. We could spend our resources on the front end, educating our young, rather than on the back end incarcerating them!

    We could attract our best and brightest to become teachers if we could pay a starting wage that truly reflects their status as professionals. Our state is facing a shortage of crisis proportions of teachers and administrators. Many are leaving the profession to receive better pay in other jobs.

    We must provide meaningful professional development for our teachers. Despite the problems with our current recertification program, we must work through those issues together and require our teachers to receive on-going professional development in some form that will enhance their ability to teach our children. We must encourage school districts to provide induction and mentoring to our new teachers in order to help them through those first few years. If we improve the quality of our teaching force, pay greater salaries to beginning teachers, use proper mentoring, induction and training programs while increasing the basic investment in education, we will see positive results. If we settle for nothing but our best and brightest entering the teaching field, we can improve public education very quickly.

    As you can see, there are most definitely improvements that must be made in our public schools. We must hold our schools accountable. Local school boards are the answer to accountability. Schools that fail their communities and their children by failing to provide high-quality education must be required to improve. We need to provide support to those specific schools that need assistance and not require burdensome stacks of state accountability paperwork when schools are achieving. Funds wasted on bureaucratic reviews of schools doing a good job could be better used to educate our children by raising the basic per pupil funding level. When schools are not performing, then we should administer programs specifically targeted toward those schools that need the outside assistance. One size-fits all statewide programs are wasteful.
We must also look at efficient use of taxpayer money. In some cases, we need to do a study to see if school district reorganization will result in better education for the students while efficiently using taxpayer resources. Far too often, children do not have the educational or co-curricular programs that would enhance their education, simply because there has never been an open-minded, student centered feasibility study to help determine what is best in that particular region for students and taxpayers. Often times, the fact that a study has not taken place has nothing to do with what is best for children and taxpayers. Often, we let past rivalries and scores of ball games hinder improvements in education for our children. I have heard that perhaps the hardest animal in the world to kill is a school mascot!

    Finally, we must take advantage of the exciting opportunities that technology presents in education. Our teaching staffs must receive professional development not only in the personal use of technology but also in how technology can be used to engage our students in the education process. Students today are interactive. They have grown up with and live with technological advances that are exciting which require them to think and solve problems. Too often, we sit these students in classrooms where they are asked to listen to lectures or participate in worksheet education rather than being engaged in the learning process, thinking, solving problems and using the tools of technology in order to learn

    We have many challenges to meet in public education! It is important that business, industry and our communities work together to make public education better in our state. It is a great challenge for all of us. We need open, honest dialogue and we must not become defensive when business and industry desire more from education. We must deliver more!