And so it was that Robert Leininger, the state superintendent of education, recently visited about 40 up-and-coming
community leaders gathered at the Illinois State Library to
tell them the whole thing — schooling in Illinois — is
broken. "We aren't producing the type of product we should
be," Leininger told the Illinois Farm Leadership Alliance.
"I'm not here to defend the system. I want to change it."
Fat chance.
Leininger might more easily try to reverse the tides, or to
command the sun to rise in the west or to give the Bears a
winning season. The dynamics of change in Illinois education policymaking are every bit as immutable as the laws of
physics or the fate of Chicago sports franchises. Education
policy in Illinois is a perpetual motion machine: lots of
activity, but it never goes anywhere.
"We're not doing the Job we should
be doing," Leininger told the collection
of agriculture and agribusiness leaders.
"If you think differently, then tell me
why one of every four ninth graders will
never get a high school diploma. Tell
me why, if you're unlucky enough to go
to certain schools, eight of every 10
freshmen will never get a diploma. Tell
me why Johnny and Suzy get their high
school diplomas and still can't fill out a
job application."
• Illinois does not have an "education governor" or any other elected
official to champion the cause of kids in
school.
• Most lawmakers are motivated not
by what's right for schoolkids but
what's expedient for reelection.
• The only education special interest
with clout — that is, the ability to
influence a legislator's reelection — is the Illinois Education
Association, which has a vested interest in maintaining the
status quo.
• The education establishment is fragmented, not just in
the historic enmity between teacher unions and management groups but in the competing interests between the
different types of school districts in Illinois and the regional
conflict that divides Illinois: Chicago, the suburbs and
downstate.
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• Bob Leininger, for all his political skill, is a toothless
tiger.
Simply put, Illinoisans are getting the educational system
they deserve.
On paper, Bob Leininger would seem to have the
perfect credentials to be the leader to bring meaningful, enduring change to public schooling in
Illinois. He's been at it — either in the schoolhouse or at the
Statehouse — for nearly four decades. He has been a
teacher, principal, district superintendent, chief lobbyist for
the State Board of Education and, since 1989, state superintendent of schools. That broad experience has enabled him
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Photo courtesy of Illinois State Board of Education
Illinois school Supt. Robert Leininger as teacher
in this storytelling session
with kindergartners.
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12/April 1993/Illinois Issues
to bridge the chasm that has long existed between those who
set policy in Springfield and those who carry it out in
classrooms throughout Illinois.
His sensitivity to the needs and concerns of teachers and
school administrators has endeared him to local educators
who have long been accustomed to regarding the state
education bureaucracy more as foe than friend. "Leininger's
appointment as state superintendent was extremely well
received by educators at the local level," says one downstate
superintendent. "Bob is viewed as somebody who really is
an advocate for schooling with the knowledge that support
has to be for the local units and not the state bureaucracy."
On the other hand, his deep understanding of the legislature
(he was the state board's chief lobbyist for 13 years under
three superintendents) and his fondness for the legislative
process, despite all its silly idiosyncracies and petty protocol, have earned him widespread respect among lawmakers.
Then again, a lot of good it's done him.
"The office is very weak," notes James Ward, a professor
of education at the University of Illinois. As state superintendent, Bob Leininger is appointed by the State Board of
Education, which in turn is named by the governor, an
arrangement hardly designed to promote bold or controversial leadership. Leininger admits that he has sometimes
gotten out in front of the board in his zeal as an advocate for
schools and that the board "reins me in."
"There is very little power," says Ward. "Bob Leininger
has tried, but by the nature of the way the office is
constructed, it's hard for a leader to come from that office."
Says Leininger: "I have some clout. But not as much as a
governor or a mayor."
"I'll share a frustration with you," says Leininger. "In
other states where there have been major movements in
education and fiscal reform — Colorado, Kentucky, Texas,
Arkansas, New Jersey — there has been an elected leader — a governor, lieutenant governor, the chairmen of the education committees in the legislature, somebody who represented the state in some capacity who stepped forward and said:
'I don't care what happens to me politically, we need to do
this.' "
Ward takes that notion one step further. "In places where
education reform has been successful, it's been the governor
who has stepped forward to make it happen. I don't know
who the last real education governor in Illinois was; maybe
Ogilvie because he passed the income tax that was devoted
to education. Education has not captured the imagination of
governors since." Notwithstanding Gov. Jim Edgar's "kids
vs. concrete" rallying cry in his March budget message,
Ward says the governor has shown little interest in the views
of educators or in cutting-edge research into the "learning
revolution" manifest in studies at universities and think
tanks at the federal level and in experimentation in some
states. Ward asserts that Edgar's modest agenda for education reform, touted recently in his State of the State address,
"flies in the face of what we know about how children
learn." Edgar's proposals for opening up the teacher ranks
to those without a teacher's certificate, for an "educational
enterprise zone" in Chicago, and other suggestions. Ward
says, "have nothing to do with public policy, but are only the
opening shots of the gubernatorial campaign."
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Leininger: "We've had an education president and an
education governor, and I've never heard one elected official who has not said that education isn't the top priority. If
that is true, why are we in the condition we're in?"
Jim Edgar never actually promised to be the "education governor." What Edgar promised in his 1990
campaign was that education would be his top priority
and that Illinois would have "an education system second to
none." Aides contend that he fulfilled his first pledge when
"he whacked the hell out of the rest of state government so
he could spare cuts in education."
Leininger has heard all that before. Whenever elected
officials tell him that education is their No. 1 priority,
Leininger has a ready response: "I'm sure as hell glad we're
not fourth or fifth priority."
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Ward asserts that Edgar's
modest agenda for education
reform, touted recently
in his State of the State
address, 'flies in the face
of what we know about
how children learn'
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Even so, Leininger gives the governor credit for protecting public schools from the budget cuts that have savaged
many state agencies. "Within the parameters he's set, Jim
Edgar will show you how education is a priority," says
Leininger. "We got money when everybody else was being
cut. I'm saying that the parameters aren't wide enough. I
support a tax increase for education. Fifty-seven percent of
the people voting [on the education funding constitutional
amendment] in November support it. I think the governor
should support it. Or somebody should support it."
Not everyone, of course, agrees that the answer to the
woes of public schools lies in increasing taxes. Gov. Edgar,
for one; the General Assembly, for another. Edgar not only
has held steadfast to his vow to oppose a general tax
increase, he has this year made a crusade of imposing caps
on local property taxes throughout the state, a move that
could further restrict revenues available to schools. So
skittish have legislators been that they refused to go along
last year when Edgar proposed modest increases in cigarette and liquor taxes.
Noting the uphill struggle to get additional money for
schools, Leininger told the Farm Leadership Alliance about
the last time the state raised the income tax, back in 1989.
When he visited the office of a suburban. Republican
April 1993/Illinois Issues/13
senator, whose name he chose not to reveal, the conversation, Leininger said, went something like this:
Senator: "You want more money for kids."
Leininger: "Yes, senator, that's why I'm here."
Senator: "You want a 20 percent increase and my schools
will not get much of that, will they?"
Leininger: "No senator, they won't."
Senator: "And my constituents will pay more of that tax
increase than most others?"
Leininger: "Yes, senator, they will."
"I won't repeat the rest of the conversation," Leininger
told the farm leaders.
That senator is now part of the Republican majority that
controls the state Senate. "It will be more difficult to sell any
type of proposal that enhances revenues," says Leininger of
the Republican Senate. "The themes will be: no new taxes
and cut the bureaucracy."
'I don't see the cavalry
coming,' says Leininger,
scanning the legislative
horizon for a savior to come
riding to the rescue. 'I don't
even hear the bugle sounding'
Nor is he likely to
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Leininger got a preview of those themes in December
when the Illinois Manufacturers' Association (IMA) unveiled its own school reform agenda. "Unfortunately," said
IMA president Greg Baise, "more money alone will not
produce the educational system desired by the business and
citizens communities." He referred to the education amendment as an "ill-conceived attempt to throw more money at a
system badly in need of reform" and said his organization
would not back additional resources for schools until the
major tenets of its reform plan were adopted. That plan,
among other things, calls for upgrading occupational education, establishing demonstration projects for school choice, increasing class sizes, lengthening the school year and
curtailing administrative costs throughout Illinois schools
"and Chicago in particular."
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The IMA proposal was the second shoe to drop in a
widening rift between the business community and the
state's education establishment. Leininger remains bitter
over the opposition state business leaders organized to help
defeat the education amendment, rupturing what had been a
promising partnership that was instrumental in passage of a
new system of evaluating schools. The system emphasizes
holding individual schools, rather than just districts, accountable for progress in student performance. Leininger:
"They told us, 'You get accountability standards, and we'll
get you more money.' Well, I'm still looking back." He says
promises of the business community remind him of the
game he plays with his granddaughter — every time she
crawls up to the toy he sets on the floor, he moves it farther
away. "That's what the private sector is like."
The IMA's no-new-taxes reform agenda also reminded
Leininger of a story about the principal of a one-room
schoolhouse in southern Illinois.
The school board told the principal to build a new school.
"That's wonderful," the principal said.
"And we want you to use the bricks of the old school to
build the new school," the school board said.
"That's fine," said the principal, "I can do that."
"And we want you to use the old school until the new
school is done."
Leininger: "They want better education, more opportunity for kids, more equity, but they don't want to pay for it."
Well, who does? "I don't see the cavalry coming,"
says Leininger, scanning the legislative horizon
for a savior to come riding to the rescue. "I don't
even hear the bugle sounding."
Nor is he likely to.
The Task Force on School Finance, the legislature's
latest school reform vehicle, recently proposed a comprehensive plan for making the funding of schools both more
equitable and adequate. And costly. Estimates place the cost
of the plan at $1.5 billion in new taxes, a feature alone
guaranteed to ruffle the governor's coiffure. Moreover, a
quarter of the task force members wrote separate statements attacking various components of the majority report.
Also, the manufacturers' association billed its own reform
agenda as a less costly alternative to what the task force
proposed. And finally, the dynamics of legislative politics
promise the task force plan a treacherous journey.
"The easiest thing in the world to be," notes Ward of the
U of I, "is a pro-education legislator. Because no matter
what you do, some group is going to think you're great."
So fragmented is the education community — between
labor and management, between different types of school
districts, between different regions of the state — that, says
Ward, "it's easy for legislators to be passive and allow the
gridlock to continue."
Chicago, once labeled the nation's worst school district
by the U.S. secretary of education, is still the district
everyone loves to bash. So chaotic seems the leadership of
the district, so unproven remain its governance reforms, so
dreadful seems the condition of its schools that Chicago
continues to be, in Leininger's words, "the whipping boy.
We've already heard it from the new legislative leaders." So
long as Chicago suffers from its (generally unfair and
inaccurate) image of incompetence and wastefulness, it
provides a convenient cover for lawmakers and a governor
seeking to avoid increasing spending, let alone taxes, for
education.
Regional splits are exacerbated by differences among
school districts themselves. Notes Wayne Sampson, executive director of the Illinois Association of School Boards:
14/April 1993/Illinois Issues
"Elementary, high school and unit districts can't even agree
on what we need to do or should be doing." It is virtually
impossible, for instance, to change the school funding
formula without creating winners and losers — K-12
districts gain at the expense of separate elementary and high
school districts, or suburban districts pay so urban districts
can profit. Legislators don't like losers, especially when
their constituents are among them. So prevalent is legislative protectionism that there is a name for it: printout
politics. When the school aid appropriation is voted on,
most legislators want only to
see computer printouts from
the State Board of Education
showing how much money
the school districts they represent will receive. "There is
no issue we deal with that is
any more parochial than education policy," says Sen. John
W. Maitland (R-44, Bloomington) who is one of the
foremost education leaders in
the legislature. "It is a printout game for many. They care
about one thing — what the
printout says about winners
and losers in their districts
and that's how they vote."
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If printout politics produces gridlock, special interest
politics cements it. "Another
barrier is the multitude of voices
that speak for education," notes Sampson. Though the
cacophony of disparate voices has occasionally joined in
harmony, it is more common for legislators to get separate
opinions from lobbyists from big districts, small districts,
urban districts, rural districts, business interests, school
boards, administrators, teachers and the State Board of
Education all on the same issue. The inability to speak in
unison has made it easy for legislators to play one interest
off against another. "We haven't ever learned that," says
Leininger.
Moreover, one special interest voice speaks louder
than any other, maybe louder than all the others
put together — the Illinois Education Association
(IEA). A savvy political force, the IEA has a huge campaign
bankroll, has thousands of members willing to work in
political trenches and has tens of thousands of members
who are spread throughout the state and vote. Sampson says
the IEA has experienced a couple of down years recently,
but adds, "the number of teachers, the PAC influence, the
ability to put staff in the field gives them a stronger
position." Its ability to influence the outcome of a legislative
race, even a statewide race, is legendary, as is its skill in
parlaying that political power into legislative clout.
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Photo courtesy of Illinois State Board of Education
Where's Bob?
State school Supt. Robert Leininger
is as comfortable sitting in the midst
of these school children as he is
when lobbying for education funding.
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That muscle is flexed, and rightfully so, for the narrow
vested interest of teachers — it is teachers who pay the dues.
But often that vested interest is in maintaining the status
quo, certainly in cases where change might endanger
teachers' jobs. Sampson wonders, for example, "Do we
really need a certified teacher in a study hall? Do we really
need phys ed for every student every day? Those requirements are protectionism for the people doing those jobs."
A few weeks ago, U.S. senators in Washington started to
get a trickle of telephone calls. Then a flood. The calls
brought a tidal wave of citizen outrage over the nomination
of Zoe Baird to be U.S. attorney general. Suddenly senators
who had been willing to wink
or look the other way about
Baird's flouting of immigration law began to scramble
for safer ground. President
Clinton was forced to look for
a new attorney general.
Hardly anybody calls
Springfield demanding that legislators
fix the schools. In fact,
Wayne Sampson ruefully
notes that public opinion
polls consistently show "people think education in the
state is terrible but their own
school is real good. It's hard
to get money for schools if
people seem happy with what
they've got."
Jim Ward: "The legislature reflects the people back home, and the people back
home are not putting much pressure on the legislature for
change. So, for the most part, we do get the schools we
deserve."
Bob Leininger spoke to some of the "people back home"
— members of the Illinois Farm Leadership Alliance — and
had another story to tell them. It was about a little girl, a
second grader, he met in a troubled urban district shortly after
he became state superintendent. When he entered a classroom, his entourage of reporters and television cameramen
urged him to kneel down next to the desk of one of the
students, Nicole as it turned out, for a nice photo opportunity.
As he knelt, Nicole began playing with a gold bracelet
that Leininger wore on his wrist.
"Where did you get this?" Nicole asked him.
"My sons gave it to me," Leininger replied.
"Do they love you?" Nicole asked.
"Yes," he replied, "they do."
"Do you love them?" she wondered.
"Yes, I do," Leininger replied.
When the entourage was ready to leave the classroom,
Leininger said, "Nicole wrapped her arms around my legs
and begged me to take her with me.
"There are a lot of Nicoles in this state," Leininger told
the farm leaders, "and we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.
And it's your job to do something about it." *
April 1993/Illinois Issues/15
