This issue of the Electronic Report is being sent to you as a member the Illinois Coalition of Non-Public Schools.  The purpose of this monthly Report is to provide brief synopses of developments with the Illinois Coalition of Non-Public Schools, legislative updates, and information of interest to our nonpublic school administrators.  Additional information may be obtained by following the hyperlinks that are imbedded throughout the Report. 

 

PRIVATE SCHOOLS PINCHED AS AID REQUESTS RISE

The Washington Post.com, Jan. 12

 

An article in the online issue of the Washington Post, focused on the challenge the recession has created for parents of private school students. Parents are being forced to make painful decisions about whether or not their child(ren) continue in private school. Parents are falling behind on tuition payments, and some are switching kids to public school now, in the middle of the school year, something they almost never do. To read more, go to:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/12/AR2009011200327.html

 

CAPE OUTLOOK

 

The Council for American Private Education (CAPE) publishes Outlook, a monthly newsletter for educators involved in nonpublic schools. The January 2009 issue is available for download as a free PDF document by clicking here or by entering the following URL in your browser: http://www.capenet.org/pdf/Outlook341.pdf

 

In Outlook this month:

Obama Visits Religious School

New Ed Secretary's Vision Shaped by Private School

Why the Obamas Chose Sidwell Friends School

And more!

 

ILLINOIS LEGISLATIVE NEWS

 

Among the bills recently signed by Governor Blagojevich, is a change in having schools, public and non-public, conduct an annual law enforcement drill. Previously, scheduling such a drill was only strongly encouraged.

SB 2688 (Kotowski, D-Park Ridge) requires school districts to conduct a law enforcement drill each year to prepare students and school personnel for evacuations for incidents of shootings, bomb threats, etc. The drill must be conducted according to the school district's current emergency and crisis response plans (already required by law) and allows schools to perform the law enforcement drills on days and times when students are not present in the school building.

The bill was signed by the governor and is now Public Act 95-1015.

NONPUBLIC SCHOOL RECOGNITION COMMITTEE MEETING
 
Members of ICNS met with the newest division administrator for recognition (Division of Educator and School Development) at ISBE in mid-December. At this meeting, ICNS was informed that there are now 3 individuals currently handling nonpublic school recognition visits.  Letters of notice should be going out in January, informing schools of scheduled visits. The cycle for elementary schools may be in the range of 6-8 years, most likely 7 years, and high schools will be more like 4 years. ISBE encouraged our nonpublic schools to participate in the regional information meetings that are held regarding recognition visits.  

 

SCHOOL CHOICE MOVEMENT IS SWEEPING ACROSS THE COUNTRY
 

Illinois children deserve access to any school – public or private – that can prepare them for academic success.  School Choice Illinois is working tirelessly to create policy change working to secure K-12 education scholarships and tax credits for Illinois children.  
 
Nearly 39,000 students did not graduate from Illinois high schools in 2006; the lost lifetime earnings in Illinois for that class of dropouts alone totals more than $10 billion. There is no greater time than now to fight for access to high quality schooling options for Illinois children.

 

Recently, two states are celebrating their School Choice Victories!
 
Georgia Governor Sonny Purdue just signed a $50 million dollar Corporate and Individual Scholarship Tax Credit Program into law. The program stands to help 10,000 low-income kids attend better schools and secure a better future. Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal demonstrated his commitment to school choice. Under his leadership, Louisiana passed school voucher legislation that would create a $10 million pilot program that funds private school tuition for qualified children in Orleans Parish public schools.

 

We are excited to see momentum for school choice growing across the nation and we applaud Louisiana and Georgia leadership in expanding educational options.  We hope to learn from their success and apply best practices to build a stronger, more effective school choice movement in Illinois. (From School Choices Illinois – eVOICES Newsletter)

 

EDUCATION IN THE NEWS
 

Boy Problems

Peg Tyre, Newsweek writer and author of The Trouble With Boys, discusses her research on why boys have fallen behind academically and what teachers can do to help.

http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2008/09/30/08boyproblems.h19.html?tmp=1602447396

 

Experts Debate 'Neovouchers' For Private Schools

Tax-credit-supported scholarships are fast outpacing vouchers as a state policy tool for promoting private school choice, the author of a new book on the topic said this week. Whether that growth is good news or bad depends on whom you ask.

In remarks at a forum on the topic held here, author Kevin G. Welner, an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, voiced a variety of concerns about policies that grant tax credits to individuals or businesses for donations they make to organizations that provide students with financial aid to attend private schools. He has dubbed the increasingly popular approach “neovouchers.” http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/12/16/16tuition.h28.html?tmp=1083441694

 

Homeschooling On The Rise

An estimated 1.5 million students (1,508,000) were homeschooled in the United States in the spring of 2007,” according to an issue brief released in December by the National Center for Education Statistics. The number is up from 1.1 million homeschooled students in 2003 and 850,000 in 1999. The 2007 figure represents about 2.9 percent of the school-age population, compared to 2.2 percent in 2003 and 1.7 percent in 1999. Data were collected through the National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) for students ages 5 through 17. Students are considered homeschooled if they are taught at home exclusively (which is true for 84 percent of homeschooled students) or if they are taught at home part-time and enrolled in public or private schools for 25 hours or less per week (which applies to 16 percent of homeschooled students). When asked to identify their most important reason for homeschooling, parents of 36 percent of students said it was to provide religious or moral instruction (the most popular “most important” reason). For parents of 21 percent of students it was concern about the school environment, and for parents of 17 percent it was dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at other schools. The issue brief is available on the NCES Web site at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009030.pdf.

(Adapted from CAPE Outlook, January, 2009)