The Chicago Tribune recently ran a five-editorial series entitled "From Here to Excellence," outlining a plan to turn around Illinois schools. In case you missed it, here's a quick recap.

• Smarter schools for Illinois outlines the series focus: how much revenue is needed to improve the schools, how can it be raised, and how should it be spent?
• Coming up short highlights the fundamental inequities in the way Illinois funds education, including over-reliance on property taxes and the way local districts are forced to find their own money when Federal funds don't cover their costs for, say, special education or bilingual students.
• In return for more money argues that before any more money is rustled up for education, a level of transparency and accountability needs to be reached by instituting pension reform, ending the protection of incompetent teachers by unions, and mandating disclosure of school spending.
• Classroom ideas that work is the first of two editorials that outline "best practices" in education that the Trib suggests should be a required part of any new funding for schools. First up: better teacher preparation, and mentoring and induction programs that help keep teachers in the classroom for more than a few years.
• Five more great ideas for the classroom adds lower class size in grades K-3, a longer school year, small group tutoring, data-driven instruction, and more school choice (especially charters) to the list of needed reforms.
• The war of the "woulds" looks at the bickering that has crippled efforts to reform school funding in Illinois ("your plan would hurt businesses," "your plan would throw good money after bad," etc.) Emphasizing that any funding reform should be tied to education reform, the editorial selects what they feel is the best proposal currently under consideration for funding Illinois schools, a 1% tax on gross receipts for businesses.
• Rising to greatness finishes the series with a call to arms, reminding readers that today's students are tomorrows voters and taxpayers.

In the next few weeks, I'd like to use this space to get back to some of these issues. Let's talk about teacher and school accountability, about best practices, and about what teachers can do to impact the school funding debate.

In the meantime, have you read this series? Thoughts?

Labels: resources