Network 21 launches statewide school reform campaign; coalition highlights urgent need for reforms - Metropolitan Planning Council

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Network 21 launches statewide school reform campaign; coalition highlights urgent need for reforms

A coalition of 40 influential business, labor and education organizations today kicked off a sweeping campaign to improve the quality of education in Illinois. The Network 21: Quality Schools for Stronger Communities Coalition is targeting both legislators and the general electorate with an urgent call to action.

A coalition of 40 influential business, labor and education organizations today kicked off a sweeping campaign to improve the quality of education in Illinois. In advance of the November elections for governor and the largest turnover in legislative offices in a decade, the Network 21: Quality Schools for Stronger Communities coalition is targeting both legislators and the general electorate with an urgent call to action.

More than 400,000 Illinois public school students are not meeting Illinois Learning Standards, and this public education crisis threatens to undermine the future of the state, coalition members said.

"After years of debating reforms to Illinois' public education problems, too few of our students learn basic skills, and too many children attend high-poverty schools with inadequate resources," said MarySue Barrett, president of the Metropolitan Planning Council, an organizer of Network 21. "Only 60 out of Illinois' 900 high poverty schools are making sure students make the grade. We have an appalling achievement gap and now is the time for action."

Former Gov. Jim Edgar applauded the effort. "I've worked on this issue for two decades and, right now, there is nothing more important to the future of Illinois than Network 21's effort to improve the quality of education for all of our students," Edgar said. 
 
Network 21 kicked off its campaign — "Quality Schools for Stronger Communities" — today with a news conference at Chicago's Nia Elementary School on the city's Near West Side, and in the Prairie Hills School District in south suburban Hazel Crest. As part of the campaign — starting on the first week of school in Chicago and across most of Illinois — coalition members will deliver more than 500 lunchboxes (made by Illinois-based Thermos Corp.) filled with education reform information to legislators and key decision makers.  They also distributed more than 20,000 brochures to concerned parents, teachers and voters throughout Illinois.  The effort will be supported by a paid advertising campaign before the November election and appearances by Network 21 members at numerous candidate forums across the state.

New Federal legislation, the No Child Left Behind Act, adds urgency to Network 21's campaign, mandating that 100 percent of the state's public school students meet Illinois Learning Standards by 2014.  Currently, only about half of students in high-poverty schools meet those standards.

Specifically, Network 21 is calling for legislators to support the following to fix public school performance problems:

  • Quality and accountability reforms , including improved teacher quality and mentoring programs, expansion and improvement of early childhood education, and partner programs between high quality and under-performing schools.
  • Funding reforms , including increasing basic minimum funding for each student, providing a reliable and predictable state funding stream, targeting resources to poor students by changing the way the state funds schools in "poverty" and reducing the reliance on the property tax to fund schools.

For more information visit www.network-21.org or call 312/922-5616.

Contact Information:
Kim Grimshaw Bolton: 312/863-6020
Dan Shomon:  312/578-0450
Tara Dunne:  773/348-3677
Cell:  773/339-0476

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