Illinois public schools: Do we need radical reform?

By JAMES GORDON WARD

Concerns about Illinois' system of elementary and secondary schools and their performance reached the public limelight in 1985 when the General Assembly enacted a broad array of educational reforms. This reform package prompted a sense of hope and movement about public schools and gave the state's school system a sense of direction. State Supt. of Education Ted Sanders said in 1985 that this series of reforms would provide a new vision of education for the state.

To any rational observer of the state's education scene, there is little evidence that any of the 1985 reforms have actually taken place: better school personnel, fewer and more efficient school districts, a balance between state mandates and local control of curricula, and a resolution of school finance problems. In fact, the complaints about Illinois public schools, from noneducators and educators alike, differ little in 1989 from the complaints of five years ago prior to the 1985 education reform package.

However, recent events such as the failure to enact a new school aid formula, the partial funding of the 1985 reforms and the lack of significant initiatives in school reform since 1985 have convinced me that significant new state resources for schools will never come until the schools radically alter the way they operate and convince the public that they can improve student performance and operational efficiencies.

Education policy discussions in Illinois, and school finance debates in particular, are fraught with a number of contradictions:

• The current state administration holds state economic growth to be a prime goal, yet Illinois for at least the last 10 years has underfunded education, which is a major instrument of economic development.
• Both school administrators and school board members demand policy changes and clamor for more state funding, yet they are the strongest supporters of the status quo in education and generally oppose any substantive changes in the way schools operate.
• Teacher organizations espouse reform and school improvement, yet they disappear when real leadership is required.
• There are demands for increased school performance from many interests, yet no one is willing to define performance nor to set reasonable educational goals.
• Business interests agitate for a better public school product, yet fail to provide more than token support for any significant efforts to improve schools.
• Many state legislators pledge their faith and honor annually to public education, yet veer off to other causes when tough education issues, like funding, are being considered.

These may seem like harsh assessments, but I do not think their basic accuracy can be honestly challenged.

I have worked with the legislature and a number of both education and noneducation groups on school finance issues since 1985. I also teach and conduct research in the areas of school finance and public policy. Therefore, as both a participant in some of the events described here and an observer of the public education scene in Illinois, I would like to advance at least one vision of public schooling in the state and one plan for how schools can be changed for the better. No one plan is perfect. I welcome suggestions. But debate must be stimulated — in these pages or elsewhere — and in that spirit, I offer mine:

Performance and Accountability. Illinois must decide what we want our public schools to accomplish and then hold them strictly accountable for accomplishing just that. Our goals currently are too diffuse, and no one really knows what the public schools are supposed to be all about. State mandates on school programs range from driver's education to drug abuse prevention, from the Illinois Constitution to commemorative holidays, and from basic literacy to who knows what. As a starting place, if nothing else, schools should be about academic achievement in basic subjects like English, mathematics, science, history, social studies and languages. Clear and reasonable goals of public schools should be made explicit, and schools should be responsible for achieving them and reporting their results regularly to the public. Sorry, no excuses are allowed.

The district report cards, learning objectives and other state mandates relating to goals are only a small step in the direction of performance assessment and accountability and have had little or no effect on school programs. The state needs to specify in clear, precise and explicit terms what children should know and be able to do and

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schools should be required to show how they have met these goals — or explain why not. High expectations for student achievement should be set and schools need to be held responsible for meeting those expectations.

Consolidation and School Organization. We know we have too many school districts in Illinois. The large number of small districts causes both educational and administrative inefficiencies and makes equalization of funding and educational opportunities nearly impossible. Some rural interests claim that population sparsity requires a large number of small school districts, but we have so many that we could erect 20-foot tall towers on the roof of every public high school in Illinois and send semaphore messages by line of sight across the entire state.

Why not attempt a bold new approach and move to countywide school districts in Illinois, with Chicago as a separate district and the rest of Cook County divided into three suburban districts? This would reduce the number of Illinois public school districts from about 970 to 105. Equalization of school funding would be made much easier, school operations could be made more efficient and effective, better programs would be offered, particularly at the secondary school level, and counties could then reasonably have the option of partially or totally replacing the school property tax with a countywide school income tax. Some mechanism could be put in place to assure that local, community elementary schools could be maintained, but that could allow at the same time the emergence of larger, regional high schools. Florida, a state with approximately the same number of public school pupils as Illinois, operates very well with 67 county-wide school districts. Or look closer to home at some of the excellent regional high schools in rural Indiana to see the advantages.

Taxpayer Equity. Some Illinois taxpayers pay too much in school property taxes; many others pay too little. To paraphrase New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's comments about local control in public welfare, local control in education leaves important decisions in the hands of communities which care, as well as communities which do not care. In many areas of Illinois, the local citizenry will not tax itself at a high enough level to offer high quality educational services. In a large number of other areas, typically in the Chicago suburbs, but in many other communities as well, the local residents are willing to tax themselves at an extremely high rate to provide excellent schools. For the 1987 tax levy, school operating tax rate burdens ranged from just under 90 cents per $100 of equalized assessed valuation (EAV) for Clinton taxpayers to $7.89 per $100 of EAV for taxpayers living in the Park Forest 163 elementary district/Rich Township High School District 227. There are plenty of other districts close to both these extremes.

With county school districts, the tax rates will be uniform across each county unit. The state should require a certain minimum tax rate for all county districts, high enough to support a quality educational program through a combination of state and local revenues. The county district system will result in lower tax rates for some current districts with extremely high rates, but the state should consider some program of property tax relief for the high tax counties. Of course, the income tax option would exist for all school districts under this arrangement. A locally voted income tax could partially replace revenues from real property taxation.

State Taxes. Progress does not come free. This proposed plan will likely require substantial increases in state support for education. By most measures, Illinois is a moderate tax state in average property tax and sales tax levels, and a low tax state in income tax levels. For example, according to U.S. census data reported by Illinois Comptroller Roland Burris for 1986-87, the per capita state and local tax burden for Illinois taxpayers was 101 percent of the national average for general sales taxation, 114 percent of the national average for property taxes, but only 78 percent of the national average for income taxation. New funding for schools must come from income taxes. If improved school performance and accountability were real possibilities, support for a state income tax increase for public schools might also become a real possibility.

We need real reform for Illinois public schools, and reform means change. If we want better educated citizens able to cope and succeed in the future, it is time we admitted in Illinois that today's public school structure belongs in the past. The competitive edge in a global economy will rest with those who do the best in developing human resources. If everyone wants Illinois public schools to perform better and with some reasonable level of guaranteed, equitable funding for each school child, that expectation may not be possible without major structural and organization reforms. We need to debate such change. Without that reform, I fear that the alternative may be failure to ever achieve improvement of education in the classrooms across a great swath of Illinois.

James Gordon Ward is assistant professor of educational administration and director of the Office for Education Policy and Leadership, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a specialist in public school finance and public policy. Preparation of this article was supported in part by the Mac Arthur Foundation and the Spencer Foundation, but the views expressed here are solely those of the author.

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