Education

Today's Daily Illini:

Members of the Illinois Student Senate are opposing an upcoming referendum.

This November, Champaign County ballots will have a referendum item asking voters to raise the sales tax by one percent to benefit school districts.

Sean Mills, co-chair of the Senate's governmental affairs committee, said property owners in Champaign will get a rebate from the tax, but students do not generally own property. Students will have to pay the sales tax but will not get the rebate that other residents will receive, he said.

Discuss.

As discussed earlier, now that the teachers' union has ratified the recently negotiated contract with Unit 4, a little more information is being made available.

Champaign teachers voted Tuesday afternoon to ratify a new three-year contract that includes raises of 4.5 percent per year for each of the next three years for most teachers, and increases beyond that for teachers with more than 21 years of experience.

"I'm happy with what they've put up for us," said Franklin Middle School teacher Cindy Stein. "They've got some good proposals that I think, outside the salary, are nice additions."

Hundreds of Champaign's 700-plus teachers showed up at Centennial High School to vote, and they approved the contract – retroactive to July 1 – by about a three-to-one margin, said Bottenfield Elementary librarian Patricia Plaut.

The Unit 4 Board will vote on this contract later this month.

In light of the imminent Champaign County Sales Tax referendum, I have been intrigued by the relative flurry of activity. Having followed and done a bit of reading about the Consent Decree, talked to Unit 4 Board Members, community activists, reporters and parents, I am fascinated by all that is being said and done on this issue.

Which leaves me befuddled; I hear people saying that Unit 4 is a mess, that the schools are in trouble, etc etc, and I know of many people that have left for the "greener pastures" of Mahomet, Monticello and even Tolono. Why? Granted, I do not have any children in school, and I have yet to make a personal visit to any school, which is why I am reserving my own judgement. But what in particular makes the general impression of Unit 4 Secondary Education "bad"? I really do want to know.

There are certainly verifiably good things going on in Unit 4. If one chooses to use the standardized tests as a metric, the scores have been going up. In fact, the elementary schools are doing great! There are lots of special programs offered at various locations, and lots of exciting opportunities. There have been several innovative planning sessions invovling prominent and lay folks alike, collaborations like Great Campus and Great Schools Together. We have a lot of awesome diversity here in the Champaign area, a rich mixture of cultures. I have heard that there is much less diversity in Mahomet, which makes comparison of the various schools rather awkward at best.

I am not looking for opinions about the administration; I have heard an earful about that. And the reasons for the Consent Decree (in all its awful glory) have been spelled out many times; no need to rehash that. Why is there "white flight"? Why is there distrust, especially in the current climate? Call me naive, but I am trying to learn.

In posting this, I am looking for feedback. I plan to answer my own questions as I talk to more folks, review the many postings on IP and what is still publicly available online with News-Gazette. With all the verbiage swirling around, I am finding it is hard to seperate the facts from the thoughts, the objective from the subjective.

In closing, my one challenge is that if things really are a mess, we get out there and clean it up. Kudos to those who have worked hard to that end; they need more recognition.

There's now a campaign committee pushing the sales tax.

The committee, Citizens Looking at Supporting Schools, with between 15 and 18 members, has been meeting for about two months, said Lin Warfel, who co-chairs the committee with Susan Abbott. The members come from all the school districts in the county.

The committee worked with two Springfield consultants on how to structure the campaign to promote the tax increase, Warfel said.

I've only seen one anti-sales-tax sign, and it was homemade, and no pro-sales-tax signs or materials.

Also, Unit 4 announces more of its intentions if the sales tax passes:

The Champaign school district plans to build a new elementary school in Savoy using the money from the countywide school facilities sales tax if the proposal passes in November.

The district would close Carrie Busey Elementary School and move the staff and students to the new school in Savoy in 2011. It would also extensively renovate six other elementary schools.

Discuss.

UPDATE:  From the comments:

The volunteer group promoting the sales tax increase is called CLASS (Citizens Looking At Supporting Schools).
Their new website is here: http://www.champaigncountyclass.cc/

Thanks!

I'll be the first to admit that I had high hopes for the UI's Global Campus, but things aren't going very well, and now UI President Joe White wants a new structure:

University of Illinois President Joseph White said he wants to turn the school's Global Campus into an independent, accredited university to speed up development of degree programs.

So far 121 students have enrolled in just five degree programs -- far short of the 9,000 students White projected would enroll by the end of the Global Campus' first five years.

When it started offering classes in January, White hoped his professors would quickly create online programs in business, engineering and other high-demand fields.

For the most part, ''That has not happened,'' White told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. ''I'm not mad at anybody about that. I think we've come to realize that we have a university faculty that is at capacity.''

White said the Global Campus is hamstrung by its status in the university system -- it lacks the autonomy of the campuses in Urbana-Champaign, Chicago and Springfield -- and by the fact that its degree programs have to be created by departments on those campuses.

Discuss.

The Von Mises Institute has accumulated a whole raft of information on the Bailout from the

standpoint of Austrian Economics.  There are articles and links to online books for those interested.

Today's News-Gazette:

The Champaign school district and its teachers' union reached a tentative contract agreement Wednesday night.

They reached the agreement after four and a half hours of negotiating, with the help of a federal mediator. It was the third time the two sides had met with the mediator.

The main issue that had to be resolved Wednesday was pay raises for teachers. Neither side released details of the three-year agreement.

Will details be released before the Board votes on the contract?

Another one:

A third civil lawsuit related to former Urbana teacher Jon White, in effect seeking more than $1.5 million, was filed Tuesday in Champaign County Circuit Court.

The suit, filed by Mattoon lawyer Sean Britton, was brought by one of White's former Urbana students and her mother, referred to as Jane Doe-7 and Julie Doe-7.

White, who is named in two counts of the suit, taught in Normal and then Urbana elementary schools before his arrest. He pleaded guilty to 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse – eight in Champaign County and two in McLean County.

The suit filed by Britton closely mirrors two filed by Champaign lawyer Ellyn Bullock on behalf of two other Urbana girls and their mothers.

Discuss.

Champaign Unit 4's School Board reveals a bit about its plans for anticipated sales tax revenue:

The Champaign school district would rebuild Washington Elementary School and add more space at Garden Hills Elementary School, with the goal of making each a magnet school, under a recommendation to be made to the Champaign school board Monday.

The proposed project would allow the school district to meet its consent decree requirement to add more elementary seats in north Champaign. The school district will also be working with the Champaign park district.

Discuss.

Much awaited:

The school board reviewed a plan for the district's future, developed over the last 10 months by residents and community leaders, at a study session Monday night. The board will vote on whether to approve the plan at its Sept. 15 regular meeting.

School board President Dave Tomlinson said the district's staff will analyze what is needed to meet the goals of the plan. Some will require more staff and a commitment of money, such as adding foreign language instruction at the elementary school level.

But not everything has a price tag. For example, a priority is developing a 10-year capital improvement plan. The district already has condition reports for its buildings, Tomlinson said. Now it needs to take those reports and make a long-range plan for building maintenance.

Superintendent Arthur Culver said the plan reviewed Monday will shape what the district does in every area.

More here.

The Champaign Unit 4 School's visioning committee will release a report this evening:

Champaign residents are asking the school district to accomplish a number of things over the next 15 years, from creating a team to look at potential school locations to establishing a bullying prevention program to increasing foreign-language offerings.

Groups of residents and community leaders who have been working since last winter on planning for the future of the Champaign school district have finalized their strategic plan, and the school board will talk about it at a study session Monday. The board will meet at 6:30 p.m. at the Mellon Administrative Center, 703 S. New St., C.

"It provides some real grass-roots direction for the future of the district, and it provides an opportunity for Unit 4 to really show a commitment to meeting the desires of the citizens of Champaign," said Bruce Knight, the city of Champaign's planning director and the chairman of the committee overseeing the planning process.

More information at greatschoolstogether.org, including a copy of the draft plan.

Today's News-Gazette:

Though a racial and economic achievement gap is still evident in Prairie State Achievement Exam scores, and though many of the scores don't meet or exceed the testing benchmark of 62.5 percent, the high school's students have shown enough growth in their test scores in every category to qualify as passing.

The rising scores, as well as the school's new rating, provoked joy from many of staff member.

"It means what we are doing as a team works. It's awesome!" dean Stephanie Price-Hammond said to the group of teachers hearing the news Monday.

The passing scores also mean the school does not have to restructure this year, though staff plan to go through with the planned changes anyway, including adding more time to the school day for freshmen and sophomores to work with teachers in subjects where they need help.

Discuss.

Eight of them?

Students, parents and teachers will see new faces in the principal's office at many Champaign schools when classes begin this week. Four of the district's 11 elementary schools have new principals, as does one of its three middle schools and both its high schools. The district's new academic alternative program has a new leader as well. The News-Gazette's Jodi Heckel takes a closer look at each of the new leaders.

My favorite response, from Joe Williams at Central:

What is your No. 1 goal for this position? Without a doubt, the No. 1 goal is to develop a strong collaborative culture focused on student learning, using best practice research within the context of our current reality. This is a dynamic process that, if implemented authentically, will improve the level of student learning for all students.

That's a lot of buzzwords.

Regardless of how one feels about testing, it's certainly better to beat the national average:

According to data released by ACT, the makers of the same-named test of college readiness, the average ACT score of a student in Illinois is 20.7 of 36 possible.

But in Urbana, Champaign, St. Joseph-Ogden and several other high schools, the averages surpass the state's.

In Urbana, for at least the eight years that Principal Laura Taylor has records, students have scored higher than the state average. This year, the class of 2008 averaged 21 – the same as the national average for the test, and a score she attributes to the school's "very strong college-prep curriculum."

Taylor said the school did not yet have an average score for the incoming seniors in the class of 2009, but would have it available soon.

Both Champaign high schools have scored higher than the state average since 2004, said Assistant Superintendent Beth Shepperd.

"We're very proud of that," she said.

The average score for students in the Centennial Class of 2008 was 21.6, and for Central students it was 20.9.

In addition, all Illinois students are required to take the ACT, which impacts how we do against the national average.  We too often focus on our local schools' deficiencies, and forget to mention good news like this.

The County Board Policy Committee passed the County Schools Sales Tax Referendum on to the full County Board tonight.  The resolution passed with the full one cent. It is to place the question on the November ballot.

Here is the report presented tonight at the committee meeting of the school districts based in Champaign County and how much they have proposed in property tax relief.

Here is a chart of the rates for bonds for the various school districts for this year's tax bills. These numbers can vary dramatically from one year to the next.

I'm not fully aware of the law.  I'm guessing that the districts which are only partly in Champaign County will probably get revenue from this as well. 

Today's News-Gazette:

Dimit and board member Brenda Carter – who has children at three schools in the district – will represent the board on the committee. Ota Dossett, the district's facilities director, will represent the school district.

Joe Vitosky, in the University of Illinois Office of Capital Programs and Real Estate Services, and Diane Marlin, who has been a Leal Elementary School, Urbana Middle School and high school parent, will serve as co-chairs.

Dimit said the rest of the committee includes Urbana police officer and parent Anthony Cobb; Sandra Carter, a parent active in the King Elementary School Parent Teacher Association; Mark Dixon, with The Atkins Group and an Urbana parent; Libby Tyler, community development director and city planner for Urbana; business owner and Urbana graduate Paul Tatman; David Guth, a parent from the Prairie Elementary School area; and parent and former school board member Donna Rinkenberger.

Discuss.

Former Navy Seal, Wrestler, and Governor of Minnesota, author Jesse Ventura is interviewed by Al Jazeera English. Jesse, author of "Don't Start the Revolution Without Me" talks about partisan politics in the United States and shares his astute and candid observations.

Part 1

Part 2

Another interesting article from this weekend's News-Gazette regarding Urbana High Schools federally-mandated NCLB restructuring:

After months of meeting and debating, the plan to restructure Urbana High School in the wake of failing to meet federal testing benchmarks has yet to be finalized.

In a June 4 e-mail, the State Board of Education gave the district 30 days to come up with a revised plan for figuring out what's working and fixing what's not.

But those days have come and gone. School starts next month, and though parts of the plan are still undecided, Urbana schools staff members have begun altering how UHS functions.

When school starts Aug. 27 for freshmen (Aug. 28 for grades 10-12), students will have an altered day, including more extra-help time with teachers for underclassmen. Freshmen will share teachers in core subject areas like math and reading, and teachers will meet more regularly to share knowledge and skills, a concept called a professional learning community.

More on restructuring in general here.  Both articles are quite good.  The NG has been doing a great job with local stories lately (or at least so it seems to me), with this seris, the Jon White stories, and the Garden Hills stories, among others.

Of every 100 freshmen entering a Chicago public high school, only about six will earn a bachelor's degree by the time they're in their mid-20s, according to a first-of-its-kind study released Thursday by the Consortium on Chicago School Research.

'We need more money.'

"Conclusion: A large number of high-quality studies show that vouchers improve academic achievement. No such study has ever found that vouchers hurt academic achievement"

'We need more money.'

The benefits of this idea, which has come to be known as school choice, are numerous. Studies show that school choice leads to better test scores for all students and higher graduation rates. They show that parents are more satisfied and involved with their child’s school, and that school choice saves taxpayers millions of dollars. And they show that public schools respond positively to competition

'We need more money.'

Let's get this done already.

'We need more money.'

If it can work in Los Angeles, it can work in Chicago!

'We need more money'.

This is why most people are scared to do what's best for the kids.   It's going to be a fight and the teacher unions are not in favor of an idea that introduces horrible ideas like competion and accountability.   You really have to watch the video to appreciate this...

'We need more money'

Illinois provides a tax credit covering educational expenses for students in any private or public school, including tuition, books and lab or activity fees. The credit is worth a maximum of $500. This makes it a little bit easier for families to choose a private school for their children.   The Illinois Federation Teachers and the Illinois Education Association filed a lawsuit preventing this.

'We need more money'

Rather than implement a proven idea to make our schools better, let's do whatever it takes to get more money no matter how stupid the idea is.

'We need more money'

The ideology that removes choice and then increases dependency on those who made it that way has been and always will be catastrophic.   The results speak for themselves.   I was listening on the radio a couple of days ago where the big teachers groups had come back from some conference.   Does anyone want to guess what they were asking for? 

Bringing this over here, so we don't threadjack the healthcare discussion.