The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) administers public education in the state of Illinois. The State Board consists of nine members who are appointed by the Governor with the consent of the Senate. Board members serve four-year terms, with State Board membership limited to two consecutive terms. The board sets educational policies and guidelines for public and private schools, preschool through grade 12, as well as vocational education. It analyzes the aims, needs and requirements of education and recommends legislation to the Illinois General Assembly and Governor for the benefit of the more than 2 million school children in the state.
Local municipalities and their respective school districts operate individual public schools but the ISBE audits performance of public schools with the Illinois School Report Card. The agency is headquartered at 100 North 1st Street in Springfield. The agency also has offices at the James R. Thompson Center in the Chicago Loop.
"Illinois Governor Pat Quinn named former Chicago School Board President Gery Chico as the new Chairman of the Illinois State Board of Education on Tuesday, June 7, 2011. Quinn said that day in Chicago that Chico's "decades of experience" in education and administration will be a boon to the state's schools. Chico became President of the Chicago School Board in 1995 when the city took over the schools. He helped close a budget deficit, build new schools and repair old ones, and got credit for raising test scores....Chico lost the Chicago mayor's race this year and finished fifth in the 2004 Democratic Senate primary that Barack Obama won."
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—Lydia Hoyt Farmer (1842–1903)
“The state is therefore everyone; the rules within the state are laws which safeguard the welfare of all and which must originate from the welfare of all.”
—Georg Büchner (1813–1837)
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—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Until we devise means of discovering workers who are temperamentally irked by monotony it will be well to take for granted that the majority of human beings cannot safely be regimented at work without relief in the form of education and recreation and pleasant surroundings.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)