Ill. governor proposes new education department

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- In a State of the State Address sure to provoke fierce opposition from some lawmakers and education leaders, Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Thursday proposed demolishing Illinois' current system for administering education and creating a new department that reports directly to him.

In his noon speech to a joint session of the state legislature, Blagojevich compared the current State Board of Education to "an old, Soviet-style bureaucracy."

"It's clunky and inefficient, it issues mandates, it spends money, it dictates policy and it isn't accountable to anyone for anything," he said.

"Because the State Board of Education keeps changing the standards schools use to evaluate their students' progress, teachers don't know what to teach, schools don't know what to offer, and students don't know how to prepare," Blagojevich said.

The speech offered little about any other initiatives Blagojevich wants to pursue this year, including how he plans to deal with the state's looming budget deficit. The Blagojevich administration says the next budget could be $2 billion in the red unless something is done to cut costs or in-crease revenue.

Blagojevich has been hinting for weeks that he would target the Board of Education. State schools superintendent Robert Schiller has defended the board's work, saying its rules and paperwork are required by law.

"The real issue is the adequacy of funding," Schiller said recently. "Unless the governor and legislature address that, everything else falls by the wayside. Everything else is rhetoric."

The Democratic governor, delivering his second State of the State Address, predicted an overhauled education bureaucracy can help schools save $1 billion over the next four years, letting them divert more money into the classroom.

The savings would come from eliminating unnecessary paperwork and red tape, he said, and also from lowering construction costs and centralizing the work of buying supplies.

A new school-construction program with lower costs could save $160 million over four years, Blagojevich said.

Regional service centers to help schools with accounting and other administrative functions could save up to $20 million a year.

Last year, Blagojevich fought to eliminate the state's Regional Offices of Education, which he called an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy. Strong support from school officials and lawmakers preserved the offices.

Former Gov. Jim Edgar proposed putting the state board under his control in his final State of the State address in 1998, only to see it quickly shot down by lawmakers. He abandoned the plan less than two months later, citing a "lack of consensus" from educational leaders.

Eliminating the Board of Education would require an amendment to the state Constitution. Blagojevich's speech, however, talks about keeping the board and having it study long-term education policy.

The speech recaps Blagojevich's work of his first year -- trying to eliminate a $5 billion budget deficit, expanding health care for poor children, approving a new program to help the elderly afford medicine.

The rest of the speech is devoted to education. His proposals include:

$15 million for 143 reading specialists downstate and an undetermined number in Chicago to work in schools that aren't meeting state standards;

$6 million to implement a new requirement that students perform 40 hours of community service before graduating;

$5 million to resurrect a program that delivers social services through schools;

$26 million to give every child 5 and under one free book a month.