…where everyone is above average. According to a report issued by Northern Illinois University’s Center for Governmental Studies (“2002 Report on the Illinois Policy Survey”), 54 percent of Illinoisans believe that the financial condition of state residents is worse than it was last year, but only 23 percent report that their own personal financial condition is worse. Likewise, only 44 percent believe that Illinois public schools overall are good or excellent, but 63 percent believe that their own community’s schools are.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Open government, Chicago style. “It seems that there’s a sincere desire to set a new tone” now that Arne Duncan heads the Chicago Public Schools, says Jacqueline Leavy, director of the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group. “But we’re waiting to see.” Indeed she is. The schools have yet to issue a capital spending plan for the current fiscal year, which is nearly over. “We’ve asked and asked and asked,” she says (Catalyst Chicago, May).
Saint Jane of the Middle Ground. University of Chicago professor Jean Bethke Elshtain tells the U. of C. Chronicle (May 9) that Jane Addams “transcends so many boundaries and categories. She’s a combination of pragmatism with commitment to Christian social gospel, deeply indebted to Abraham Lincoln and the Lincolnian vision of democracy….Some feminists find her too maternal or traditional, while The Wall Street Journal saw her, wrongly, as a precursor of big government and the welfare state. If conservatives place someone on the left and liberals place them on the right, then that’s a clue that that person may have captured a complicated middle ground, which I think, indeed, Jane Addams has done.”
