Below are links to news stories of interest from newspapers that came up during a search today. These links were active at the time of this e-mail, but should you want to save a story, printing it or cutting and pasting the entire article and saving it to your computer is recommended.
State News 
Our View: Principals, teachers held accountable
DeKalb Daily Chronicle – implementing high academic standards, providing support for low-performing schools and evaluating teachers based, in part, on student performance. Gov. Pat Quinn and the Illinois State Board of education submitted the state’s Race to the Top application to the U.S. Department of education on Tuesday
Stop chipping away at reforms that have passed
Chicago Daily Herald Editorial – The lobby that represents teachers, the Illinois Education Association, funnels millions of dollars to political campaigns, both Democrats and Republicans. The IEA wanted a deal. Before tying student performance to evaluations, lawmakers would have to change the new Freedom of Information law, one of the few reform measures approved in Illinois in the wake of corruption scandals.
Editorial: Politics block sunshine
Quad Cities Dispatch Argus Leader – Well that certainly didn’t take long. The landmark and long overdue rewrite of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act was just 11 days old, the Illinois Press Association says, when officials began working quickly and secretly, drafting language prohibiting disclosure of superintendent, principal and teacher performance evaluations, which are, or were, at last subject to the FOIA.
Court: Ill. school district not liable for abuse
Chicago WBBM 780 Radio – An appellate court has upheld a lower court’s ruling that a central Illinois school district can’t be held responsible for the behavior a former teacher who was convicted of sexually abusing students.
Bleak February in store for school district leaders February is shaping up to be a rough month for cash-strapped local school districts. That’s when many area school boards will have to decide whether to make additional staffing cuts for next year’s academic calendar.
Kaneland begins filling in the blanks
Geneva Kane County Chronicle – An administrative position and administrators’ pay would be cut, while about a dozen positions would be eliminated in the district’s schools if the school board follows recommendations contained in a revised version of the administrators’ plan. Administrators will present the plan to the school board during Monday’s meeting
Plainfield schools take aim at deficit
Suburban Chicago News – The board will hold a special meeting later in the week to vote on the deficit reduction plan. A date has yet to be set for that meeting. Public comments Over the past week, Harper has met with the school board in closed sessions to discuss cuts to specific positions and personnel. During Monday’s meeting, the board is expected to listen to comments and concerns from the public
School board may vote on cuts
Joliet Herald News – The New Lenox school board may vote at a specially called meeting next week on $2.6 million in reductions, including staff, for the 2010-11 school year.
School officials prepare for uncertain funding future
Galesburg Register Mail – Abingdon School District 217 Superintendent Tami Roskamp said uncertainty about state funding was a major problem. The district has received only one of four special education funding payments from the state since the beginning of the fiscal year on July 1. “We know there’s doom and gloom coming, which is really sad for our students,”
Students protest Maine Township teacher cuts
Chicago Tribune – It took a big budget axe to energize, and unite, the Maine Twp. High School District 207 community. Nearly 2,000 teachers, students, coaches, parents, alumni, and residents packed the Maine East High School auditorium Wednesday night, Jan. 20, to protest the district’s proposal to lay off more than 130 teachers and staff members to reduce a $19 million budget deficit.
Harsh reality: State’s IOUs to school districts adding up
Champaign News Gazette – As state woes continue, officials worry about shortfall – and that major program, staffing cuts will have to follow. Some area students will have to forgo field trips this semester and make do with old textbooks and computers instead of getting new ones. Some teachers may have to miss out on training seminars that are out of town.
D303 cuts 2010-11 school year budget
Elgin Courier – The district actually needs about $5.5 million in reductions, but by using $1.4 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — federal stimulus funds — for special education program costs, the total cuts needed were reduced. However, if the state doesn’t pony up the money it owes to District 303, more cuts may be on the way, Schlomann warned.
Champaign school district seeking $2 million in cuts
Champaign News Gazette – They will be discussing how to cut more than $2 million from the district’s budget for next year at Monday’s school board meeting, at 7 p.m. at the Mellon Administrative Center, 703 S. New St., C. The district must cut its expenses because it expects to get less money from the state next year.
Save Jobs, Use Reserves, Says 207 Community
Park Ridge Journal – “We understand you have to reduce expenses, but don’t do it by cutting out so many teachers, the district’s most precious and important assets.” Five members of the District 207 Board of education and five top-level administrators sat for more than four hours and got an earful from more than 75 speakers, many of whom delivered strongly emotional statements.
State board denies U-46’s request for bilingual class size waiver
Arlington Heights Daily Herald – Not buying the argument that costs surpassed funds received for bilingual education programs, the state board of education has denied Elgin Area School District U-46’s request for an exemption to state law on class-size caps for students learning English. “It is determined
EIU board votes to increase student housing rates
Mattoon Journal Gazette – Hoops is a professor of audiology and speech sciences, and has served as president of the University of Southern Indiana. Treichel is executive director of the National Business Education Association and grew up at Eastern, where her father was chief engineer at the Physical Plant and her grandmother was a housekeeper in Pemberton Hall.
State funding for education not likely to change; ‘It’s about all we could ask for,’ Quincy official says
Quincy Herald-Whig – The district spent $9,739 to educate each student last year, compared with the state average of $10,006. The annual GSA foundation level increase recommended by the education funding Advisory Board is $1,873 per student over the last year, or $7,992. The board chose not to recommend that as it would have added $3 billion to the state’s education budget.
Teacher Strike Could End in Dist. 111 A tentative agreement has been worked out to end a teachers strike in Kankakee School Dist. 111. Teachers walked off the job earlier this week in a dispute …
Students back on Monday if teachers accept contract A tentative contract agreement was reached at 4:45 pm Thursday between negotiators for the Kankakee District 111 School Board and striking …
Timeline of events leading up to Kankakee strike March 30, 2009 The negotiating team for the Kankakee School District 111 Board of Education and Kankakee Federation of Teachers union sit down for the first …
Residents voice support for charter high school
Chicago Daily Southtown – “There is no global kind of approach,” Davis said. Reactions to the proposal were mixed. Mike Curran, president of the Rich Township High School Education Association, the district’s teachers union, was one of the most vocal critics. Curran said creation of the charter school is unnecessary.
Local superintendents react to ‘Race’ proposal with skepticism, questions
Arlington Heights Daily Herald – Districts merely looking to supplant funds, however, likely won’t be bringing home any cash. “We want to fund the states and the districts that are willing to challenge the status quo, who have school boards, teachers unions working together. … This is going to be a very, very high bar.” Jose Torres, who is familiar with Duncan from his time as a regional superintendent
Some UI faculty plan to take same days off
Champaign News Gazette – Some University of Illinois faculty in Urbana plan to take the same unpaid days off to send a message to state politicians – that budget cuts hurt. The Campus Faculty Association, an unofficial union for UI professors, is planning four coordinated furlough days, the first on Feb. 15.
New fast track to CPS top-flight schools?
Chicago Sun Times – factor in whether that student is accepted at a selective enrollment elementary or high school. That worries Phil Jackson, founder of the Black Star Project, who protested the changes at a recent school board meeting. “You can game the census tracts,” Jackson said. In gentrifying census tracts, “usually the people who are performing the best are probably going to be” children of wealthier
Political News
Governor candidates have no qualms cashing big checks
Arlington Heights Daily Herald – The engineers put in about $250,000. Additionally, teachers unions have started to send large checks to Hynes with endorsements having recently rolled out. The Illinois Education Association just sent him $100,000. Charles McBarron, a spokesman for the Illinois Education Association that represents suburban and downstate public teachers,
Quinn, Hynes in Democratic dead heat for governor primary
Chicago Tribune – He moved from being known by little more than half of GOP voters to 81 percent of them. Dillard, who saw his support increase slightly from 9 percent in the last survey, also is being backed by the Illinois Education Association, a powerful teachers union that has sought a tax increase to bolster funding for schools and pensions. More than 85 percent of Republican voters still believe
Prison scandal puts Hynes back in race
Chicago Daily Southtown – Stick a fork in him. Sayonara, dude. Pretty much everybody had given up on him. Hynes had spent millions of dollars and hadn’t closed the gap between himself and Gov. Quinn. His message at the time – that Quinn’s tax increase proposals were bad for the middle class – just wasn’t working. He trailed Quinn in every poll by anywhere from 20 to 30 percentage point
Hynes, Quinn campaign at Chicago churches
Chicago WLS (ABC) 7 – With a little more than a week until the primary election, both Democratic candidates for governor visited Chicago churches Sunday. Gov. Pat Quinn went to four different churches, including the Triedstone Full Gospel Baptist church, where he spent time worshipping with the congregation. Quinn appealed for the votes of the faithful,
Quinn looks to education, tax reform to ‘keep the ship afloat’
Quad Cities Dispatch Argus Leader – Gov. Pat Quinn says he has been making a difference since he became governor last January. Today, he says, the state is better off than it was a year ago and he has plans to continue to improve the state’s shaky economy.
In My View: Quinn tries the ‘hidden ball’ trick
Springfield State Journal Register – In case you missed it, a big event took place in Springfield last week — the governor’s State of the State speech. There was a restoration of stateliness to the occasion, unlike a year ago. Then the as yet unindicted Gov. Rod Blagojevich made one of his last official public appearances. Observers expected buffoonery and baloney and that’s what they got.
Facts behind the GOP contest for Ill. senator
Chicago WBBM 780 Radio – He has a record of anti-Semitic remarks and was denied an Illinois law license because of concerns about his stability. – Kathleen Thomas is a historian and former college teacher. She served on the school board in New Berlin, a small town near Springfield. — THE ISSUES – Health Care: The candidates generally oppose the health care proposals being discussed by Democrats in Washington.
Schillerstrom: ‘I didn’t think we could win’
Suburban Chicago News – tax increase (through severe program cuts and zero-based budgeting), as well as the well-publicized vow to serve no more than one term as governor. Asked whether the current tough campaigning between Gov. Quinn and his Democratic rival Dan Hynes would help Republicans, Schillerstrom said “I would encourage them to continue to beat on each other.”
A Bernanke defeat could raise risk of ‘double dip’ recession, but approval seems more likely
Chicago Tribune – A defeat of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s quest for another four-year term could raise the risk of a “double dip” recession if political jousting over a successor were to drag on for months, economists warn. But Bernanke’s prospects appeared to brighten Sunday, with three more senators, including Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky,
Adviser says Obama is pursuing health care changes
Washington Post – White House adviser David Axelrod says President Barack Obama isn’t giving up trying to overhaul the country’s health care system. Obama’s chief political aide says it would be politically foolish for lawmakers who supported the overhaul so far to walk away from it now. The Senate election Tuesday in Massachusetts gave Republicans the victory they needed to block the Democrat
Durbin: Dems weighing healthcare strategy, but not starting over
The Hill – Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Sunday that Democrats needed to sit down to figure out how to push through healthcare reform, while firmly rejecting any notion that the process has not been bipartisan. “We’re now considering our strategy” after Sen.-elect Scott Brown’s (R-Mass.) surprising win Tuesday took away the Democrats’ supermajority, Durbin said on “Face the Nation.”
Obama’s State of Union to focus on jobs
Washington Times – President Barack Obama’s chief political adviser said Sunday the president will focus on job-creating plans in his State of the Union address Wednesday night. Strategist David Axelrod says the White House takes only “cold comfort” from the fact that the president’s stimulus program saved about 2 million jobs — given the millions lost in the deepest economic downturn
Source: Obama to skip jury duty in Chicago suburbs
Washington – A White House official says President Barack Obama will be skipping jury duty after being summoned in Illinois. The administration official confirmed to The Associated Press on Sunday that the president alerted the court weeks ago that he won’t be able to make it. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak publicly.
White House advisers promise sharper focus on jobs
USA Today – A politically shaken White House promised Sunday a sharper focus on jobs and the economy, but key advisers were less sure-footed on health care reform. They took a wait-and-see approach as the dust settles from the punishing loss of the late Edward M. Kennedy’s Senate seat. President Barack Obama’s poll numbers are off — primarily because of the slow economic
National News
A Superwoman for Kenya, but America is still waiting for Superman Roger Ebert – “Waiting for Superman” studies the failing American educational system. Oh, yes, it is failing. We spend more money per student than any other nation in the world, but the test scores of our students have fallen from near the top to near the bottom among developed nations. Our scientific and medical institutions employ so many Asians for a clear reason: They must be recruited. There are not enough qualified American students
Bill Gates with Olivia Munn at the Sundance Film Festival Bill Gates on Waiting for Superman
In high court’s big cases, it’s 4 liberals vs 4 conservatives; takes Justice Kennedy to make 5
Chicago Tribune – It comes down to this at the Supreme Court: If you’ve got Justice Anthony Kennedy on your side, you can pretty much do what you want. Without him, you’re the author of an angry dissent. Thursday’s decision to strike down restrictions on corporate campaign spending more than 60 years old was the third time in nine days that the court divided 5-4, with liberals on one side and conservatives on the other.
Most Viewed Articles on washingtonpost.com
1) The seeker as problem-solver During one of his Afghan review meetings last year, President Obama surprised senior advisers by jumping into a discussion between two military officials about a new study of post-traumatic stress disorder.
2) Lifelines dry up for mortgage lending For more than a year, the government pulled out the stops to revive home buying by driving down mortgage rates.
3) A revolution in ruins Hugo Chavez’s ideological campaign is finally on the brink of collapse.
4) The Corporate States of America? A Supreme Court ruling calls for a revolt.
5) Officials fear lethal use for faux Botox labs In early 2006, a mysterious cosmetics trader named Rakhman began showing up at salons in St. Petersburg, Russia, hawking a popular anti-aging drug at suspiciously low prices. He flashed a briefcase filled with vials and promised he could deliver more — “as many as you want,” he told buyers –
6) Prime Minister Obama Recall the purpose of the presidency and push some legislation to believe in.
7) The bolt from the blue state If Martha Coakley’s defeat in Massachusetts was a political earthquake, most journalists were slow to hear the tremors.
8.) Web sites ensure online lives don’t disappear with ‘dearly departed’ Heather Pierce lives in Glover Park, but much of her life floats in the cloud.
9) Deadly blasts rock Baghdad; ‘Chemical Ali’ hanged BAGHDAD — Suicide bombers struck near three hotels popular with Western journalists and businessmen Monday just as Iraq announced the execution of Saddam Hussein’s notorious cousin known as “Chemical Ali.” At least 37 people were killed and more than 104 injured, security officials said.
10) Attack targets Baghdad hotel compounds, kills at least 36 BAGHDAD — A coordinated attack of vehicle bombs on Monday ripped through the perimeters of three hotel compounds known for housing foreign journalists, destroying a nearby apartment building and leaving at least 36 people dead.
Should the Census Be Asking People if They Are Negro?
The United States is one of the few countries that asks questions about race and ethnicity in its Census, even using the word Negro. Is it wrong to ask such things?
David Ho has already helped the world control HIV with powerful new drugs. For his next trick, he’d like to eradicate it
In Jaipur, the Indian Book Market Comes Into Its Own
The Indian economy is growing, and so is its appetite for books.
Fighting the Good Fight on Chinese Censorship
It is time for the United States to begin pressuring China publicly on its unwillingness to play a positive role in global diplomatic efforts — from climate change to Iran’s nuclear program.
Tony Blair is set to publicly account for Britain’s role in Iraq. Expect no apologies
Word of the Day for Monday, January 25, 2010
plenipotentiary \plen-uh-puh-TEN-shee-air-ee; -shuh-ree\, adjective:
1. Containing or conferring full power; invested with full power; as, “plenipotentiary license; plenipotentiary ministers.”
noun:
1. A person invested with full power to transact any business; especially, an ambassador or diplomatic agent with full power to negotiate a treaty or to transact other business.