Peoria

Another day, another terrible competitiveness ranking for Illinois

By Lawrence McQuillan
07/12/2012
CNBC just released its 2012 America’s Top States for Business, and guess what, Illinois didn’t top the list (no surprise there), but it wasn’t even in the top half! Illinois placed a dismal 26th, worse than most of its neighboring states. Texas took top honors as it has done for three of the six years that...

10 Peoria-area municipalities fail government transparency audit

By Brian Costin
04/11/2012
Peoria, Ill. (April 11, 2012) – Ten out of eleven government agencies in the Peoria-area received failing grades in an online transparency audit conducted by local citizen activists and the Illinois Policy Institute. Members of the Peoria 9/12 group worked with the Institute to grade local government websites on how much public data is readily...

The prison system is not a jobs program

By Lawrence McQuillan
04/04/2012
On March 19, the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL) at the University of Illinois released an assessment of the economic impacts on local economies of proposed closures of four correctional and adult transition centers – Tamms, Dwight, Westside, and Peoria. The study, Impact of the Closure of Selected Department of Corrections Facilities, calculates the direct, indirect...

SPECIAL REPORT: Turning Passes into Fails

01/31/2011
The owner of a medical testing laboratory conducting drug tests of probationers in Cook County says the chief probation officer and several judges are pressuring him for data so they can turn negative drug tests into positive ones—passes into fails.

Peoria: Good Vibes and a New School Choice

09/17/2010
by Collin Hitt Central Illinois’s newest charter school held an open house last night. I drove up from Springfield to check it out. Called Quest Charter Academy, the school will grow to enroll children in grades 6 through 12.  It’ll focus on math and science, and will mirror the international compass of local businesses like...

“Education As We Know It Is Finished”

07/15/2010
by Collin Hitt That’s the title of a new Forbes piece by Clayton Christiansen and Michael Horn. School is out, and for most students enjoying their midsummer pleasures, class time is a distant memory. Changes are underway that make it likely to stay that way. Christiansen and Horn have written a book on the topic of “disruptive innovation” in...

Billions in the Hole? Time for Pay Raises!

07/01/2010
by Kristina Rasmussen Even though the state budget is billions of dollars out of whack, many state government employees are set to receive a pay raise today. From the Pantagraph: SPRINGFIELD — Despite a state budget that is billions of dollars out of whack, more than 46,000 state workers will see bigger paychecks on Thursday. Judges, prison...

School Lotteries in Film and in Real Life

06/29/2010
Charter school lotteries are appearing in more movies lately. The scenes are  made for the medium, parents hoping that blind luck will give them a chance at a better school. Movies such as The Lottery, Waiting for Superman, and The Cartel will be spreading to screens across Illinois.  So, coincidentally, are charter school lotteries themselves....
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Chicago Forward 2026: A pro-growth plan to end city budget deficits

Chicago’s $1.15 billion projected budget gap is the latest in a decades-long string of structural deficits. Making Chicago’s high taxes worse is not the solution.

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Diana Graham

Process for unionizing non-state workers raises red flags

By Paul Kersey
06/19/2014

CBS Chicago: Illinois’ highest-paid superintendent receives $400K per year to oversee 1,200 students

By Ted Dabrowski
05/02/2016