Events that may never achieve federal sponsorship. As a counterweight to the “annual abuse of the constitution” known as the National Day of Prayer, members of the “community of reason,” including the American Humanist Association, are sponsoring a National Day of Reason on May 6, 2004 (nationaldayofreason.org).
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The threat of academic probation spurred improvements at some schools, according to a recent study of measures taken between 1999 and 2001 by the Chicago Board of Education, reports Elizabeth Duffrin in Catalyst Chicago (April). But the schools tended to be those that were already performing better. “Where staff could not figure out how to raise test scores, probation only demoralized them,” Duffrin writes, and “external partners,” such as nonprofits and local universities, weren’t much help. They failed to provide the focused, in-depth training that “teachers need to significantly change instruction.”
“The single largest state and local tax on business in Illinois is the property tax on business real property,” accounting for almost 44 percent of state and local business taxes in fiscal 2002, reports Ernst & Young in a March 26 report prepared for the Illinois Chamber of Commerce and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. Surprisingly, “the corporate income tax accounts for less than 13 percent of all the state and local taxes imposed on business in Illinois.”
