At the end of the 2006-2007 school year, educators, administrators and legislators gathered to discuss policies and recommend strategies for the Illinois Schools. The focus of the forum was to discuss educational reforms that have shown the greatest results, and to create specific recommendations for the Illinois Schools.

Policies That Could Work for Illinois Schools

The forum for Illinois Public Schools was partially sponsored by privately funded groups like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, and the Chicago Community Trust. The areas identified as holding good potential for the Illinois Schools were: improving educator quality, performance rewards, data-driven improvements, and further support and creation of public charter schools.

According to Ellen Alberding, president of the Joyce Foundation, “More money alone won’t create successful schools. We need to link any new funding with high-impact reforms that work, particularly when it comes to teacher quality, which research shows has the most impact on student achievement.” Support for this position led to the following recommendations for teacher quality in the Illinois Schools. First of all, the group would like to implement a two-year mentoring program for new teachers in the Illinois Schools. Second, they recommend a pilot compensation program to reward excellence in teaching. Support for both practices comes from data showing that 40% of teachers in Illinois Schools leave in the first 5 years, and that in-school support greatly increases the likelihood that they will stay.

Other recommendations were that Illinois Schools create a system to collect data on student performance, and that teachers use data to improve instruction. There is a strong correlation between high performance and data-driven schools. To become a data-driven system, the Illinois Schools would need to look beyond test scores to things like attendance, grades, extra-curricular activities, and discipline rates.

More Charters for Illinois Schools

Finally, the forum recommended increasing the number of, and support for, charters in the Illinois Schools. Many of the Illinois Schools’ charter programs have good track records, and even waiting lists for attendance. However, charter schools are not universally embraced, as their independent accounting has resulted in some issues. There are also some concerns over admission guidelines among second language learners and delayed learners. But the Illinois Schools have had many successes with this system.

Overall, the recommendations the forum made for Illinois Schools are based on results tested over time, and from other districts and states in the country. The big decisions at this point will be where to use and how to spread out the funding from private and state organizations. Some decisions have already been made. For instance, the Gates Foundation is funding 11 new small schools in Chicago as part of that city’s High School Transformation Program. So Illinois Schools have some good prospects, and now some solid recommendations. Parents, teachers and administrators of the Illinois Schools are just waiting to see the results of implementing those actions.

Real estate experts and the media who predicted a meltdown of real estate, a plummeting of home value rates and the bursting of the housing bubble should be feeling just a bit sheepish now, since none of those predictions have come to pass. Sure the market has slowed, and yes the value of a home isn’t appreciating quite as much as it did in past years, but the real estate market is still plodding steadily along. Besides, knowing how the ‘national’ market is doing, or the median home value in the nation (it was around $221,900 in 2006), isn’t going to do you much good when you’re ready to buy a new home.

What WILL do you some good is thinking about how much your new home value may increase over the years, depending on the area where you want to move. Real estate is an investment, so it’s important to invest where your value is sure to rise. Since we can’t predict the future, the best thing to do is to look at past trends in home value prices and rate of sales, as well as the economy, population, job opportunities, unemployment rate and attractions an area has to offer. This will give you a fair idea of where your home value may go in the future.

Illinois (capital city: Springfield) has seen large growth in the past few years with a population of 12,831,970 as of 2006. The economy of Illinois is based on agricultural products such as corn, soybeans, hogs, cattle, dairy products and wheat, and a larger industrial sector of machinery, food processing, electric equipment, chemical products, printing and publishing, fabricated metal products, transportation equipment, petroleum and coal. With such a large and varied economy, job growth stays steady, always a good indication that home values are likely to appreciate steadily in a given area.

Though tourism isn’t a major industry in Illinois, they still receive a fairly large amount of visitors daily. Illinois is home to the Windy City, Chicago, known for Wrigley Field, two different baseball teams and of course, the Sears Tower. Not to mention the family entertainment in the area (zoos, amusement parks, recreational centers, etc) and of course, the night life. The rest of Illinois has various historical sites (after all, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Ronald Regan all have ties to Illinois), plenty of state parks and outdoor activities, and various odd sights and attractions here and there (like the larger than life Superman statue and museum greeting visitors in Metropolis, Illinois). There’s also plenty of outdoor adventures, great fishing, beautiful wine country and scenic byways.

Lately Illinois has experienced a rather average unemployment rate compared to the nation, at about 4.8%, with more jobs opening in the fields of construction, professional & business services, education & health sectors and leisure & hospitality. In 2005, the median household income in Illinois was relatively high compared to many states in the U.S. at about $50,260. This means that a good percentage of people can afford homes which are above the median home value of Illinois. As of April, the median home value of properties sold was about $287,240, according to information from RealtyTrac. Other sources say the median home value for the first quarter was only about $197,000.

Chicago is definitely one of the pricer places to live in Illinois, but also the one with the most opportunities. At the end of 2006, the median value of homes was about $279,400, a 1.7% increase from a year ago. The housing in the capital city of Springfield stays steady and rarely fluctuates into a strong buyer or seller market. The average home price in the city is about $138,396 which is much cheaper than Chicago. On the western border of Illinois, in Quincey, the median home value is low at $110,730, but the average amount of time a home stays on the market is over 150 days.

All in all, though Illinois home values continue to rise, they have leveled off from the boom of the past few years. On a month to month basis, they wobble somewhat, with minimal increases and decreases, but looked at over a year, Illinois home values has steadily increased. As long as unemployment stays down and job growth up, there’s no reason that steady appreciation can’t continue.