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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“An Illinois woman has invented a portable house which can be carried about in a cart or expressed to the seashore. It has also folding furniture and a complete camping outfit.”
—Lydia Hoyt Farmer (1842–1903)
“Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“This morning I threw up at a board meeting. I was sure the cat was out of the bag, but no one seemed to think anything about it; apparently it’s quite common for people to throw up at board meetings.”
—Jane Wagner (b. 1935)
“With a generous endowment of motherhood provided by legislation, with all laws against voluntary motherhood and education in its methods repealed, with the feminist ideal of education accepted in home and school, and with all special barriers removed in every field of human activity, there is no reason why woman should not become almost a human thing. It will be time enough then to consider whether she has a soul.”
—Crystal Eastman (1881–1928)