Excerpts from A New Game Plan for Illinois

“Illinois can be characterized as the barely average state. Our educational achievement is mediocre at best, and our lack of commitment to poor children is embarrassing… we appear not to be shamed by this. Clearly we are not outraged; otherwise we would be doing something about it.”

“Instead our policymakers operate at the margins of our mediocrity. Debate is over how to do a better job of doing what we did last year in Illinois when what we did last year had almost nothing to do with poor children nor with world competitiveness in education.”

“The fundamental issues that will define Illinois in the decades to come are: education; the underclass of the permanently poor; perceptions by others and by ourselves of who we are and what we are about, and our level of confidence that we can do something about our futures.”

“I propose two goals: 1) that every poor child in Illinois have a full opportunity to get close to the same starting line for formal education as that for typical middle-class youngsters, and 2) that our elementary and secondary schools become among the best in the world.”

“Straightforward goals. Goals that we believe in. Goals we once thought we had pretty much achieved. Why not again?”