Opinions
Daily Chronicle • www.daily-chronicle.com • Page A5 • Thursday, September 12, 2013
8OUR VIEW
8SKETCH VIEW
DeKalb can’t give up on truancy law
8VIEWS
Gov. Quinn: From outsider to insider By SCOTT REEDER Illinois Policy Institute SPRINGFIELD – Some politicians make better pot-stirrers than problem solvers. For most of Pat Quinn’s political career, he has played the role of rabble-rouser. He was the consummate outsider taking on the political establishment. In the 1980s, he successfully led the charge to reduce the size of the Illinois General Assembly. In protest of a 1978 legislative pay raise, Quinn, whose birthday shares a date with the Boston Tea Party, inspired 40,000 Illinoisans to mail tea bags to then-Gov. James R. Thompson. Now, Quinn, who decades ago founded the Citizen’s Utility Board in response to a perceived coziness between corporate public utilities and government, has become a champion of corporate welfare himself. Sears, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and many other politically connected corporations have been the beneficiaries of the governor’s largess with our tax dollars. For most of his career the governor has burnished the image of himself as a populist jousting with the political establishment. Today, Quinn is the political estab-
lishment. Rather than railing against the powers that be, Quinn is defending the status quo. The flip-flopping examples are numerous. In the 1990s, Quinn pushed for a constitutional amendment to create term limits for legislators. But the Illinois Supreme Court threw out the proposal before it could go to the voters. Just this past week, however, he came out against a new plan to create term limits for state lawmakers. This time the plan is being pushed by GOP gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Rauner. His handling of the question shows how the role of political insider fits Quinn about as well as a cheap suit. Look no further than his utter impotence in pushing for pension reform. The best we have gotten from the Quinn administration are plans to kick the state’s $100 billion pension crisis further down the road. And even those lackluster proposals have gone nowhere. That’s hardly a record to build a re-election campaign on. To be fair, Quinn’s case is hardly unique. I’ve seen it countless times in my 25 years covering politics – where outsiders become insiders and would-be reformers become defenders of the status quo. That said, Rauner’s push comes at an
awkward time for Quinn. By the time Quinn finishes this term, he’ll have served six years as governor – and he is running for another four-year term. That makes it difficult for him to support a constitutional amendment that would limit lawmakers to serving fewer years than he is seeking as governor. Rauner’s full proposal also would make it harder to override a governor’s veto by changing the majority of votes needed from three-fifths to two-thirds. And he wants to limit legislators to eight years in office, cut the size of the Senate from 59 members to 41 and expand the House from 118 to 123. Quinn spokesman Dave Blanchette said the governor opposes the measure because he doesn’t believe the House should be expanded by five seats. It would seem a small point to oppose term limits on, especially since Quinn was once the cause’s most vocal supporter. But then again, he’s an insider now. And that says it all.
• Scott Reeder is a veteran statehouse reporter and the journalist in residence at the Illinois Policy Institute. He can be reached at sreeder@illinoispolicy.org.
Stop Obama’s war against school choice One of President Barack Obama’s conceits is that he is a pragmatist who seeks policies that work rather than pursuing a partisan agenda. On school choice, he doesn’t live up to the advertisement. His administration has been relentless in its ideological hostility to the idea, and seized on every possible pretext to express that hostility. The White House considers any government funding for private or parochial education, even indirect funding, to be a betrayal of the public schools. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program – which provides federally funded vouchers for poor kids in Washington to attend private schools – seems to have had some positive results, including higher high-school graduation rates for participants. Yet the Obama administration has repeatedly tried to end funding for it. This position was terribly misguided, but it was at least open and transparent. Twice this year, the White House has gone after local school-choice programs – which involve no federal funding – in a more underhanded way. In April, the Justice Department announced that private schools that participate in a choice program in Milwaukee will be subject to new regulations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. They will be treated as though they were government contractors. Never mind that the schools have contracts with parents, not with the government that aids the parents. Never mind, either, that in the program’s 22 years of operation no complaint about the treatment of a disabled student has ever been filed. A five-year study of the program found that being disabled had no bearing on a student’s likelihood of getting into a participating school. The decision will nonetheless raise costs
VIEWS Ramesh Ponnuru for the private schools. It also will make them think twice about participating, both because they want to avoid those costs and because they don’t want to compromise their independence. The administration’s latest strike against school choice is a lawsuit against a program in Louisiana, created by Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal. The Justice Department is using a 1975 desegregation order to argue that Louisiana should get approval from a federal court before giving scholarships to students in some school districts. Otherwise, the department claims, the scholarships could make Louisiana schools less racially integrated. The program is open to poor families with kids in public schools that have gotten a C, D or F from the state government. In Louisiana, most of those families are black, not members of the White Citizens’ Council. The Jindal administration says 90 percent of the recipients are black. The state’s department of education reports that so far these students are doing better on math and literacy tests than they were in public schools. The Justice Department cites two public schools to illustrate its concerns. Five white students used scholarships to leave one, “reinforcing the racial identity of the school as a black school.” In another, the exit of six black students made a “white school” whiter. This is racial bean-counting at its worst. Jason Bedrick, who studies education policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, calculates the first school went from 29.6 percent to
28.9 percent white. The second went from 30.1 percent to 29.2 percent black. These are trivial changes. The Justice Department also is measuring school segregation in a perverse way. It treats a school as integrated when it matches the racial composition of the school district. Yet the districts are themselves segregated – and tying school attendance to residency makes that segregation worse. Neighborhoods with good public schools have higher property values, which makes it harder for poor black families to move into them. Americans who have enough money exercise school choice when they buy their homes. Greg Forster, a researcher who favors school choice, addresses the measurement problem by comparing schools’ racial makeup to that of their metropolitan areas. He points out that seven studies have found that school choice promotes racial integration – measured correctly – while one found it has no impact. No study has found that it promotes segregation. Forster also found that of the 12 best studies on school choice and educational outcomes, 11 found positive effects and one found no effect. The racial integration of schools, while a good thing, is not as important as getting students to learn more. A policy that showed educational promise but also had the side effect of decreasing integration would be worth pursuing. If the Obama administration isn’t willing to embrace school choice itself, it should at least quit trying to squash it in the states and cities that are.
• Ramesh Ponnuru is a Bloomberg View columnist, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor at National Review.
Letters to the Editor Karen Pletsch – General Manager
Eric Olson – Editor
kpletsch@shawmedia.com
eolson@shawmedia.com
Dana Herra – MidWeek Editor dherra@shawmedia.com
Inger Koch – Features Editor ikoch@shawmedia.com
Jillian Duchnowski – News Editor jduchnowski@shawmedia.com
We welcome original letters on public issues. Letters must include the author’s full name, address and day and evening phone numbers. We limit letters to 400 words. We accept one letter per person every 15 days. All letters are subject to editing for length and clarity. Email: news@daily-chronicle.com. Mail: Daily Chronicle, Letters to the Editor, 1586 Barber Greene Road, DeKalb, IL 60115. Fax: 815-758-5059.
The DeKalb City Council should not abandon a proposal to address truant students. Tweak it, change it, rearrange it, but don’t drop it. If Illinois School Report Card data is any guide, truancy is an issue in the city, and school and city officials should work more closely to combat it. For the 2011-12 school year, the most recent year for which data is available, the chronic truancy rate for DeKalb High School was 12.2 percent of the 1,788 students enrolled. Chronic truants are defined as students with nine or more unexcused absences in the past 180 school days. For the record At DeKalb High, there were more than 200 such students, The DeKalb City Council according to the data. should not abandon a By comparison, the rate proposal to address truant at Sycamore High School in 2012 was 3.3 percent, accord- students. Tweak it, change it, reing to report card data. arrange it, but don’t drop it. At an August meeting, the DeKalb City Council considered a proposal that would address the problem. The proposal included fines of $25 for first-time offenders, $100 for second offenses and $500 for each subsequent offense. Parents could also be fined $100 for the first offense, $250 for the second and $500 for the third offense. It laid out procedures where DeKalb police could detain students they suspected of skipping school and call District 428 or other schools to check their enrollment status. The plan was derided by residents, many of them parents who home-school their children. They were concerned their children would be targeted by police as suspected truants. It was also said that the county’s Regional Office of Education already has truancy officers, so the city’s involvement was unnecessary. None of those complaints should be taken as a reason to scuttle the proposal, which addresses a problem that police school resource officers and District 428 officials have been concerned about for years. The proposal might not be perfect. For one, state law provides for fines of up to $100, not $500, for truancy violators. For another, there should be an effort made to address residents’ concerns, either through better communication or changes to the ordinance. In reality, the proposed DeKalb ordinance probably doesn’t make it more likely that a home-schooled child would be detained – which is different from being arrested – because they are suspected of skipping school. For one, DeKalb police do not patrol the streets looking for truants, Police Chief Eugene Lowery said. When police do encounter truant students, it’s usually because the children are involved in other incidents that require a police response, be it suspicious activity or a crime. For another, police already have the power under state law to detain a student suspected of truancy. The point of the city ordinance was that it built in cooperation with District 428 officials. As to the county’s truancy officers, the program is funded by a state grant and has seen a 25 percent funding decline since 2010, Regional Superintendent of Schools Amanda Christensen said. There are four part-time truancy caseworkers who serve the county’s 17,000 students, and most of their work is done in schools and through in-home visits. Truancy officers are unlikely to encounter students on the street, and can use any help they can get in assisting at-risk youth understand the importance of attending school. “We should be building a network of support with whatever network or organization is willing to work with us,” Christensen said. Ordinances similar to the one proposed in DeKalb exist in many communities around Illinois, and they do not appear to have led to the systematic harassment of home-schoolers. When students skip school, they are more likely to get into all sorts of trouble – or be victims of crime themselves. If allowing DeKalb police to become more active in keeping students in school can help reduce truancy and accompanying crime, it is worth the effort.
8 ANOTHER VIEW
Peril, opportunity in e-cigarettes Is the rising popularity of electronic cigarettes a public health problem or a way for smokers to get their nicotine in a safer form? Right now, e-cigarettes appear to be both. If flavorings, advertising and easy access result in lots of students committing to a lifetime of addiction to nicotine products – and the CDC’s latest results suggest that might be happening – e-cigarettes could serve as a dangerous gateway drug. The Food and Drug Administration has the power to demand information from companies on e-cigarettes’ ingredients, regulate their contents and control their sale, and it has expressed interest in doing all that. But the agency has taken its time. It should get going. Yet public health advocates also should appreciate the other side of e-cigarettes – their potential value to those already struggling with addiction. We would be the last ones to hope that any tobacco product succeeds. Nicotine addiction is not to be wished on anyone. But if the FDA can get more addicted smokers onto e-cigarettes without encouraging children and teen-agers to take up smoking, it would do some good. The Washington Post
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. – U.S. Bill of Rights, First Amendment