Education reform and the power brokers
By DON SEVENER

Illinois education undoubtedly needs improvement. Study after study shows that U.S. students are scoring poorer than previous generations. Illinois is no exception. Reform is in the air — at least politically — but competing interests in the education arena may doom any significant reform. Besides, there's no money.

LIKE PADDY Bauler's Chicago, Illinois education ain't ready for reform, and for much the same reason. The reformers don't have the power, and without lots of cash to pay for it the power brokers don't have the inclination. So, despite a mountain of national and state studies diagnosing what ails public schools and prescribing various remedies, the prognosis for significant, meaningful, substantive change in Illinois elementary and secondary education remains doubtful.

That is not to say that as campaign 1984 and the General Assembly session (actually one and the same) move into high gear, there will be any shortage of doctors poking needles, applying Band-Aids or pushing placebos at public schools. There will be education reform packages galore. They will come from the Illinois State Board of Education, which cannot take a hint about its reform plans . . . from House Speaker Michael Madigan, who cannot resist a chance to "reform" anything gathering lots of headlines . . . from Gov. James R. Thompson, who shows signs of seeing education as more than a place to balance the budget . . . from the School Problems Commission, which tends to shy from controversy but whose legislative members rarely shy from publicity . . . perhaps even from teacher unions, which are taking a battering over the classroom reputation of their members and their legislative reputation as obstructionists.

They will seek to reform what is taught in the classroom and what is learned; how teachers are trained, paid and judged, and how good students and instructors can be rewarded. About the only thing missing will be the money to pay for it.

And that has at least one state education official worried. "You'll have this reform act and that reform act and when you put them all together, you'll find out nothing happened," says Nelson Ashline, deputy state superintendent. "The danger is not that we won't get reform. The danger is that the reform will be extremely superficial. And that's more dangerous than doing nothing because it lulls people into a sense of false security."

Few argue some change — major change — is needed. Even before the president's commission on excellence reported the nation was at risk from a "rising tide of mediocrity" in its public schools, the State Board of Education was documenting disturbing trends and dire deficiencies in the classroom. A year ago, the state board unveiled a comprehensive study of student achievement comparing Illinois students with their peers nationally and gauging performance over a span of more than a decade of testing in Illinois. It concluded: "In general, Illinois students are scoring as well as other students across the country." Small consolation to have your apples no more rotten than the rest of the barrel, yet that was the good news. "However," the study continued, "the improvement on tests of basic and lower level skills is offset by a decline on tests of more advanced skills."

The detailed analysis of the Illinois apples was even more alarming:

—  "On the average, Illinois students are generally reading at the same level as their peers across the country. Students are answering approximately half the questions correctly. Student performance drops significantly when the student responds to advanced and complex reading passages.

—    "The ability of Illinois high school juniors to recognize correct English usage has declined significantly over the last 10 years.

—   "In social studies . . . performance on test questions involving world cultures declined significantly between 1970 and 1981.

—    "Illinois students are solving mathematics problems on the average as well as their peers across the country and have been improving somewhat in basic computation and application.

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However, Illinois students have declined significantly in their ability to solve advanced mathematics problems."

Meanwhile, the state board had other studies underway trying to explain why the apples were decaying. In a series of controversial reports on curriculum, the board concluded local school districts were being choked by overly restrictive statutory or regulatory mandates that served only "to stultify creativity at the local level where it could exist to a high degree." Subsequent studies found the time devoted to the three R's had been eroded by increased demands for a new menu of educations — from health and consumer education to career and driver training — and a generous helping of noninstructional services — from breakfast and lunch to baby-sitting after school. "It is indeed ironic," the report said, "that the questions and criticisms of student achievement focus precisely on those aspects of schooling which existed as virtually the sole task of schools prior to the turn of the century and from which . . . time had necessarily been borrowed to accommodate the new instructional tasks and services. Thus, physical education consumes as much student time as language arts and more time than math or science."

Yet, that was only part of the equation, still another study suggested. "Available evidence indicates that the academic potential of prospective teachers, particularly among women, has declined significantly in the past decade. Prospective teachers do not pursue academically rigorous high school programs, display uncertainty about achieving their occupational goals and score less well on tests of basic knowledge. Illinois teacher education institutions have not, as a group, acted decisively to demand excellence in both academic and practical performance of candidates through establishing rigorous requirements for admission into and retention in preparation programs." The study also pointed a finger at school districts, claiming they have been lax about recruiting good teachers and have generally failed to set qualifications above minimum state standards. It accused local authorities of failing to strenuously evaluate beginning teachers and extend probationary periods when they find problems.

It took no scholar to add two plus two: Unreasonable demands on schools and teachers ill-equipped to meet them equalled an inescapable conclusion. "Illinois, long accustomed to considering itself as an educational leader among the states, has not been spared this national trend toward educational decline," asserted a legislative resolution establishing the Illinois Commission on the Improvement of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The commission, which was created by the legislature in July and formally set up shop in September, is not due to report until January 1985. But already there are plenty of ideas in the suggestion

'Is it any wonder that student achievement appears to be headed toward mediocrity when schools have been asked to do the impossible?'

box.

First, Illinois can look to other states. According to national surveys in the wake of the "Nation at Risk" report, lawmakers, governors and educators across the country are responding to the criticism of public schools with a variety of measures. At least 33 states, for example, are considering some form of merit pay for teachers. Adding hours to the school day, days to the school year or segregating periods for basic instruction all are gaining popularity. More than half the states (including Illinois) already have toughened high school graduation requirements and the rest are thinking about it. New standards for evaluating teachers have passed seven states, while seven others now require teachers to pass a competency test for certification.

But Illinois reformers need not stray far from home for ideas. In a series of hearings around the state, the Improvement Commission has received plenty of advice, most of it summed up by one of the first voices it heard.

Listen to Ronald Marino, superintendent of the Ottawa Elementary District: "Take a quick look at the responsibilities that have been given to us. Schools are being asked to feed students breakfast, lunch and sometimes a snack; check students' vision, hearing and teeth; and periodically check for head lice; see that students are properly immunized; show them how to brush their teeth; teach young people good nutrition; integrate the schools where cities cannot integrate their neighborhoods; provide recreation; teach students to respect others and to respect themselves; show young people how to ride their bikes safely and how to drive cars properly; teach about consumer education, Arbor Day and commemorative holidays; teach students how babies are made and how to avoid having them; and to convince young people not to smoke, use drugs or alcohol; provide instruction in computers, parenting, dangers of nuclear waste, race relations and communism-socialism; and, oh yes, the public still demands that kids be able to read, write and compute. Is it any wonder that student achievement appears to be heading toward mediocrity when schools have been asked to do the impossible? We've been asked to be all things to all people — to please everybody.

"If ever there was a time in the history of American education when there was a compelling need for a cooperative effort on the part of school boards, teachers, administrators, parents, the state board and the General Assembly, it is now. We need a new 'Coalition for Kids' if we are going to bring about meaningful changes in our schools."

An eloquent call to arms. But, given the battlefront he faces, he might do better to circle the wagons.

It may be instructive to recall the political drama of the major education "reform" act of 1983, a drama that teaches more than anything who runs the show.

A singular defeat

Flanked by the president of the Illinois Education Association (IEA), Governor Thompson summons state school Superintendent Donald G. Gill from the audience at a Capitol press conference to stand beside him as he announces approval, with minor

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changes, of an IEA bill to increase high school graduation requirements. The event marks a singular defeat for the State Board of Education. Its own proposals to repeal the driver eduation requirement and relax the physical education mandate had been dumped by the Senate Elementary and Secondary Education Committee without the courtesy (or necessity) of debate. Bowing to the muscle of potent teacher unions, the committee flushed two years of work by the state board down the drain. Meanwhile, in a demonstration of who has power and who does not, the IEA engineered passage of "curriculum reform" — new graduation requirements dictating the number of years students must sit through courses in language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, foreign language, music, the fine arts, computer science and (if they want) vocational education.

Didn't the state board oppose the tew requirements, Gill is asked. Well yes, he replies, the board prefers its own approach, writing into law "outcome statements" based on "what a student should know and be able to do." The new requirements, Gill says, "probably won't do much harm, nor will they do much good." An incensed Thompson, using the "prerogative that a governor controls his own press conference," quickly returns to point out "neither the board's studies nor the national studies recommend against requiring that students study certain things in school."

Aides to the superintendent shudder. IEA chief Reg Weaver snickers. To further antagonize a governor some already consider hostile to the State Board of Education at his own press conference was worthy of a political dunce cap. But it was also characteristic of an agency with a history of being politically inept, often overly protective of its turf, more concerned with being right than popular and lacking an independent political base that would ensure its voice is heard.

The governor is not the only one the state board has alienated. When the board became overseer of public schools eight years ago, one legislative aid suggests, "It had an insatiable appetite for recognition. They weren't interested in working with someone else because they feared someone else would get the credit."

Gill acknowledges the board may have been guilty of building fences instead of friendships. One of the biggest barriers separated the board from the legislature's School Problems Commission, a group of powerful legislators with powerful egos who didn't cotton to an upstart agency thinking it could move to the head of the class. "You had this board coming into existence whose mandate in law was to do many of the things that had been in the province of the commission, a very prestigious group which historically had been extremely effective. Well, only recently have we begun to set up a cooperative effort with the commission which has been long overdue, and it's helping to eliminate the tension and turf-guarding," says Gill.

But there are other problems that simply go with the turf. Because of the diversity of Illinois and its education community, the state board can hardly make a decision without alienating somebody. "Education touches everybody," notes a long-time board observer. "With education, you're focusing on values, on subjective judgments that are hard to quantify — issues like competency testing or how much do you spend on special education and what categories; issues for which there are not easy, clearcut answers. Then you have the conflict between labor and management, between the IFT [Illinois Federation of Teachers] and the IEA, between gifted and special ed. The state board has a heavy bucket to carry."

And the heavier the issue, the more likely the bucket is to spill, as the board has proved time after time: with the recent mandates studies, with efforts to alter regional education services, with its tough stand on desegregation, with cautious steps toward school district consolidation. "The things we call reform," says Robert Leininger, the board's chief lobbyist, "rock some people's boats."

Then other boats get rocked simply because the board seems unable to recognize others besides education have a right to sail the sea. What appears to some as a laudable commitment to education becomes to others a myopic, single-minded pursuit of dollars that ignores the competition of needs. "The board needs an awareness that there re other needs," says a former legislative aide. "For example, how much should you spend battling child abuse versus gifted education? That's a legitimate question. But the board does not see the dimensions of the priority setting the governor and General Assembly have to go through."

It is the pain in the neck of state government, the agency others know they cannot ignore but often wish would go away. "I think a lot of people have become disenchanted with educators, so they don't listen to us anymore," says Theodore Rockafellow, superintendent of the Moline School District, citing the burial of the state board's mandates proposals. "I think it's going to happen more and more." He is probably right.

"There was no constituency to cut mandated programs," says Ben Polk, a former Republican legislator from Moline and leader in the House on education matters. "The state board has no political clout, it lacks a constituency."

Gill concedes as much. Although he rightly notes the board has a "significant impact on legislation," he just as correctly acknowledges "we don't have the kind of naked influence that other vested interests — mainly unions — can have. Teachers can have a significant positive effect on legislation. On issues where we differ, I wish they weren't quite so powerful."

A potent force

Albert Shanker, head of the Illinois Federation of Teachers' national organization, arrives to address a state convention of school board members from across Illinois. He is greeted by Ron Cardoni, lobbyist for the Illinois Association of School Boards, who tells Shanker he will have to wait until Governor Thompson finishes his speech to the convention. "We decided," the puckish Cardoni quips "to let the IEA go first."

The Illinois Education Association is probably the single most potent force in Illinois education. With a campaign bankroll in the hundreds of thousands, an army of voters and campaign workers in the tens of thousands and a legislative lobbying operation the envy of most others, when the IEA talks, people listen. It is rarely bashful about

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speaking its mind.

Might the IEA, for instance, ever hint to the governor that its endorsement, its money and its manpower may have had a little to do with him being governor? "Of course, we've suggested that," says John Ryor, IEA executive secretary. "I never state that in the context of wanting something. I think he's fully aware of the arithmetic before one sits down to talk. But I think it is important to remind them that there weren't very many big state organizations who were willing or active or aggressive in pursuit of that." And even though there were organizations more generous to the Thompson reelection than the IEA's $5,750, those folks lacked an important dimension. Big business, Ryor says, "gives money, but they don't really have the capacity to get people out in the streets. Their people are people of means who are willing to give, but they aren't going to do the grubby work, they aren't going to march door-to-door to find out how the neighborhood is doing. Our people will, and do.

"We've got a lot of money to spend. But our greatest resource is the ubiquitous nature of our organization. We're in every town and county and jurisdiction — save some districts in Chicago — and in good numbers. When the money is spent, it's gone. Building a loyal constituency that's willing to go into the streets or the phone banks and do the knock-down, drag-out work that's required, that is really the art.

"Obviously, once our friends or people sympathetic to education issues are in office, we spend a good deal of time speaking with them, trying to persuade them this bill or that bill is in the best interests of not only our teachers but education as a whole."

Persuasive they — and their sibling rival, the Illinois Federation of Teachers — are. Although the IFT spends considerably less than the IEA and has a far less active and sophisticated political operation, its close ties to the Chicago legislative delegation give it clout in Capitol corridors. So do its growing number of members, many from the ranks of former IEA locals.

"I don't think you can get a major educational reform done in this state without the unions," Harold Seamon, executive director of the school board association, says with a touch of envy.

"The advantage the IEA has over our organization is that their membership stands to gain if they accomplish something. If there is a bill to increase job security or give more sick time or increase pension rights, a teacher sees an advantage and will go out and work like the devil to get it done. But a school board member has a little different role, because they're volunteers. They have their own professions. There is not the personal self-interest in terms of their pocketbooks."

Nor is there the political sophistication. Says Republican Sen. Cal Schuneman of Prophetstown (37th District): "When you consider who is winning in Springfield, boards or unions, you've got to conclude the score is lobsided for teacher unions. That is directly traceable to the fact school boards are not involved in the political system. Most of them want to be neutral. I'm struck by how naive they are to expect the legislature to represent the same ideas school board members represent when they play no role in the political process where teacher unions are the experts."

He cites a measure passed by the General Assembly last year to pay school nurses on the same salary scale as certified teachers. The bill had 41 co-sponsors in the House, 37 of whom shared $23,970 in IEA campaign donations. After sliding easily out of the House, it was picked up in the Senate by Vince Demuzio, a Carlinville Democrat (49th District) and recipient of $2,050 from the IEA. "It seems to me there is no relationship between the job of a nurse and the job of a teacher," Schuneman says. "It will cost school districts more and cause some nurses to lose their jobs. Did we hear any clamor from the folks back home? I doubt they even know we did it to them yet."

So when school board lobbyist Ron Cardoni steps before a legislative committee to testify, say, against a bill to pay nurses as if they were teachers, he gets a polite welcome and few votes. "Cardoni is very respected," says Polk. "But his problem has been that he had no constituency; school board people are not political. So he gives you all the facts in the world, but he can't assist in reelection."

But recently, Polk adds, the school board association and like-spirited organizations have reached out to other constituencies. "They have gone to other groups for assistance — like the PTA, the Taxpayers Federation, the Farm Bureau. That gets the attention of legislators."

"The legislature has the final say," notes David Elder, director of the School Problems Commission. "If you can put a coalition together with the votes, you can do anything you want."

A fatal flaw

Bob Leininger had barely crossed the street for the two-block walk to the Capitol when he noticed a fatal flaw in the resolution he was to shepherd through the General Assembly. Without representation of the School Problems Commission, he knew, the plan to create a Commission on the Improvement of Elementary and Secondary Education would wind up on the legislative scrapheap. "Gene Hoffman would have killed it before it got to the floor," Leininger says of the School Problems Commission chairman, who is one of a handful of respected and important education specialists in the legislature. The resolution was changed, it passed and now half the 20-member study group comes from the ranks of the School Problems Commission.

Says Seamon: "The School Problems Commission is a tremendous force, which historically has acted as the state board of education and was able to carry out its agenda because it also had the Gene Hoffmans and Charley Clabaughs and those kinds of people who had enormous influence in the legislature."

The commission is generally regarded as the place to go for problem solving. Its hearings around the state are well-attended and, Elder says, commonly produce scores of suggestions or appeals for help. "A lot of people feel the most sympathetic voice they have is the School Problems Commission. We're not part of the bureaucracy."

In part, the commission derives its power from the diversity of its membership, which ranges the spectrum of the education establishment — from the state board's lobbyist to the IEA's lobbyist. But that strength can also be a weakness. Agreement by any group disparate enough to include representatives of the state superintendent of education, teacher unions, the Bureau of

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the Budget, Chicago Democrats and suburban Republicans is not likely to concern a momentous or controversial decision. Ben Polk noticed that when he was a commission member: "The School Problems Commission never faced an issue that made the state live or die. We were a sounding board. They don't allow anything on the agenda that will create internal animosity."

Still, it is a group to be reckoned with, primarily because two-thirds of its 15 members are legislators. "These are the recognized education leaders in both houses and both parties," says Elder. "So you have a built-in lobbying force other groups don't have."

"On a controversial piece of legislation," suggests a former legislative assistant, "everybody will be looking for cues. The School Problems Commission provides a way for these opinion leaders to educate someone so they understand the proposal." Polk remembers filling such a role for House Republicans before Hoffman (R-40, Elmhurst). "I carried at least 24 or 25 votes," he recalls. "My colleagues trusted me on downstate education issues."

Across the rotunda, Sen. Arthur L. Berman (D-2, Chicago) likes to think he carries a few votes, but recently he has not been so sure. Berman, chairman of the Senate Education Committee vice chairman of the School Problems Commission and co-chairman of the new Improvement Commission, frets that Chicago's legislative delegation is as fractured as the city's political apparatus. He notes a Chicago school board request for a 50-cent property tax increase last year split the Chicago delegation even though a similar plan a year earlier that had the backing of the mayor won the backing of all the city's senators. "There lies a lesson for the school board and the political leadership. It's difficult getting non-Chicago legislators to support Chicago legislation. Chicago must be as unified as possible." Since the property tax increase involved no state dollars, Berman says, proponents were able "to go across the aisle and downstate and get votes for other tradeoffs — giving away money [from state school aid] that would have gone to Chicago."

There has hardly been much money to give away to anybody in recent years, a fact that enhances the influence of Governor Thompson.

Says Elder: "The governor's office is a force that has to be dealt with, not from the standpoint of where the ideas come from or the legislative process itself, but because of the governor's influence in developing the budget and using the amendatory veto. His influence is greater because people know the veto potential."

A siege mentality

It's early October and Dr. No — Thompson's budget chief Robert Mandeville — is delivering his famous chalk talk to the State Board of Education. The figures do not look rosy. "Spendable revenues for fiscal year 1985 will be just about what we have this year," Mandeville says. "I'm not yet sure who the winners and losers will be if revenues remain constant."

One of the losers is sure to be education reform. Not all reform measures have a high price tag. The IEA's Ryor says his organization would support raising standards for entry into teacher training programs, certification standards, even competency testing. "There is nothing served by an organization like ours advocating incompetence in the classroom." Just so long as the reformers don't get carried away. "What many people are getting at is they want to take all hundred thousand teachers and test them all and rerun them through the mill. We're going to have serious reservation about any attempt to do that sort of thing unless they're going to run all doctors and all lawyers and all engineers and all journalists and everybody back through their college system. We as a teacher union will never accede to some wholesale slaughter of people who have paid their way through the system."

And he suggests raising standards without raising pay probably won't do much to raise teacher quality. "You can stiffen standards and it won't cost you a lot of dollars. But I don't think there is a snowball's chance in hell that you're going to encourage your brightest high school students to enter that rigorous a program with the prospects of a salary schedule that starts at eleven or twelve thousand dollars and tops out at eighteen or nineteen [thousand] downstate." Just a $l,000-per-year salary increase for each teacher would cost $100 million, the state board estimates.

No one expects new dollars of that magnitude to be available anytime soon, least of all those on the firing line where something of a siege mentality seems to be setting in. "The mentality out there has become one of survival," says Leininger. "There are administrators who have laid off 250 teachers at a crack and closed eight or 10 buildings at a crack. They're not thinking about grand reform, they're just worrying 'what am I going to have to do this April?' "

There is one other thing worrying local educators. They are concerned that in place of reform they can't afford, policymakers will opt for reform that costs little and accomplishes less. "The politics of the time is a bunch of quick fixes," complains Moline Superintendent Rockafellow. "The new graduation requirements are just a gimmick. Merit pay is another. There is no way to make that work in public schools and it certainly doesn't change teaching. There are a lot of gimmicks out there and some of them will pass."

And if it is not a gimmick or it does not have big dollars behind it, prospects go from bleak to bust. The IEA, for example, already has expressed misgivings over a Gill plan to begin raising the salaries for neophyte teachers, suggesting any pay plan that ignores veteran instructors faces a rough legislative ride.

Taxpayers, parents, educators and students watching the curtain rise on the drama of 1984 education reform ought not to get their hopes too high for a happy ending.

Don Sevener is a reporter in the Lee Enterprises Springfield bureau.

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