catalyst-chicago.org

State Rep. La Shawn K. Ford (D-Chicago) wants to offer merit pay to elected Local School Council members whose schools show marked academic improvement, Progress Illinois reports.

If the proposal passes, Ford said the money used for the compensation would come from the Illinois State Lottery rather than a new tax. Merit pay is needed to show the LSC members support for the responsibilities they shoulder, Ford said.

Today is the filing deadline for parents and community members to run in the upcoming Local School Council elections.

The education reform group Stand for Children, credited with helping to win major education legislation in Springfield last year, endorsed 14 “education champions”— six Democrats and eight Republicans— in legislative races across Illinois. All of them won Tuesday. Stand for Children put more than $420,000 into the election, including $150,000 in contributions to the leadership of both major political parties. (WBEZ)

Local media are all reporting on the resignation of embattled University of Illinois President Michael Hogan.
Crain's Chicago Business writes "recently came under fire for his managerial style. He had previously refused to step down despite mounting pressure from faculty who disagreed with decisions he was making about the school."

Tribune: When University of Illinois President Michael Hogan took over 20 months ago after an embarrassing scandal, his supporters championed him as a likable reformer who could stabilize the university. On Thursday, he resigned after months of turmoil, a faculty mutiny and a scandal in the president's office that had left him so sidelined that people began to question not whether he would quit but when.

Sun-Times: The move comes after more than 100 faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus called on him to step down.

Here's more reporting, from WBEZ, on the just released Consortium research that shows Chicago Public Schools students enrolled in a rigorous college prep program, known as the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, are much more likely to get into good colleges.

IN THE STATE
The Illinois State Board of Education has chosen the Consortium for Educational Change and Teachscape, a provider of online professional learning content, innovative tools and services to provide an online system by which to train and assess all of Illinois' teacher evaluators. The teacher evaluator training is part of a statewide performance evaluation-training program intended to help state school districts meet the requirements of the state's Performance Evaluation Reform Act. (PR Newswire)

IN THE NATION
When teachers leave schools, overall morale appears to suffer enough that student achievement declines—both for those taught by the departed teachers and by students whose teachers stayed put, concludes a study recently presented at a conference held by the Center for Longitudinal Data in Education Research. (Education Week)

The Fairfax County (Va.) Public Schools system says there are no plans to discipline a middle school teacher after he was reported to have assigned his students work that involved researching the vulnerabilities of the Republicans running for president. (ABC News)

California school districts issue more pink slips than necessary and the state should consider alternatives to seniority-based layoffs, according to a report from the state legislative analyst’s office. (Los Angeles Times

AROUND THE WORLD

Grade-school students in a northeastern Brazilian city are using uniforms embedded with computer chips that alert parents if they are cutting classes, the city’s education secretary said Thursday. (The New York Times)