University of Illinois

Brilliant Futures for our Children

President B. Joseph White
Champaign-Urbana Schools Foundation
Twentieth Anniversary Event
April 25, 2008

Thank you for being here tonight and for supporting the Champaign-Urbana Schools Foundation.

Congratulations to the Foundation on your 20th anniversary. The Foundation is an inspired idea, in the same way that the University of Illinois Foundation was an inspired idea to support our great University.

I can tell you firsthand that private funds are essential for excellence when you are running a public education enterprise, whether it's K-12 or the U of I.

My wife, Mary, and I, like Richard and Susan Herman, have come to love this community. You may know that when Mary and I moved here three and one-half years ago, it was just the two of us and our dog, Webster.

Now, there are a dozen of us: my mom and dad, our two children and their spouses and four grandchildren. And Webster has a big cousin, my daughter's dog, Ben. We all love it here.

Our two oldest grandchildren will be entering the public schools this fall. In fact, last night was kindergarten roundup. Remember the story of the pig and the chicken discussing a ham and egg breakfast? "I'm involved in it," said the chicken. "You may be involved, but I'm committed," said the pig. In that spirit, this fall we're going as a family from being just involved with the Champaign-Urbana public schools to being totally committed to them, as are many of you.

The public schools are vitally important to all of us. While I believe deeply in the value of choice and competition, including parochial and private schools and charter and magnet schools, the fact is that most of our kids go to the public schools, we pay our taxes to support them, and their future is highly consequential to all of us.

Indeed, the public schools are the most important "commons" of our community. The private sector by and large takes care of itself. The health-care sector is strong, and there is good leadership there. A number of us are charged with ensuring a vibrant future for the University of Illinois, a centerpiece of our community. But what we all depend on is the public schools to do an excellent job of educating the kids — all the kids.

Let me offer a view which you may find provocative. I believe that if we could guarantee people who live in Champaign-Urbana now, or are considering living here in the future, that by paying your property taxes you will have access to uniformly excellent public schools from kindergarten through high school, our towns would be completely unstoppable. Because I think we already have here what most Americans don't believe is even available any more: a great quality of life, low stress and hassle, variety and diversity and a reasonable cost of living, including residential real estate. But people also want to be able to send their kids to the public schools and know they'll be safe and get a great education.

That's why I think it is so worth supporting the commons of our community — our public schools.

At the risk of preaching to the converted, I want to remind you about the vital importance of quality education.

My daughter, Audrey, and I have been doing research on what will be required for America's children to have a good shot at what we call "brilliant futures."

Most important, it turns out, is early childhood development — security and good nutrition and quality preschool education care from birth to age 5.

After that, it's all about education.

In terms of valuable outcomes, education may be the most unqualified good we know. In broad strokes, more education enables people to know and achieve their dreams; it builds a strong economy and a strong democracy; and, it ensures America's leadership and competitiveness in a global world.

The higher your level of education, the more likely you are to be employed, earn a higher income, vote, volunteer, exercise, report better health and have children with higher educational achievement. More education makes you less likely to be unemployed, poor, imprisoned, smoke, need public assistance, die at a younger age and have children who drop out of school.

The correlations between levels of education and these outcomes are as strong and consistent as any I have seen in social science. There are virtually perfect positive correlations between education and lifetime earnings, education and voting, education and volunteerism, even education and longevity.

The problem is that the education pipeline is very leaky. For example,

• Fifteen percent of Americans drop out of high school annually and never finish. This doesn't sound too bad except that that's over a million dropouts a year. In 17 of the nation's largest cities, the dropout rate is more than 50 percent. Prospects are tough with only a high school diploma today, tougher if the education behind it is weak and exceedingly dim as a dropout.

• Forty-four percent of Americans never attend college at all, a big loss for them and for all of us.

• Only 28 percent of Americans graduate from college even though college graduates have much higher lifetime earnings than high school graduates and a one-third lower unemployment rate.

And there's another problem. We like to think of America as a meritocracy with an even starting line and a level playing field. But the relationship between family income and children's college graduation rates says that's not the case. More than half the kids from top income quintile families graduate from college, 25 percent from the middle quintile, only about 10 percent from the bottom quintile.

I haven't even addressed the issue of the inferior average achievement levels of American kids versus their peers in some other countries, especially in Asia. But a reasonable summary of what I have said is this:

• Quality education for all our kids is essential for them and America to have the future we want.

• Not kids enough are getting it; and,

• The public schools are at the epicenter of this challenge.

I'd like to conclude by focusing on our Champaign-Urbana public schools and what we can do to support them.

There is a lot that's good about our schools. The teachers are highly qualified — more than half have master's degrees or above. The high school drop-out rates are much lower than the national average. The high school graduate rates are an impressive 96 percent in Champaign and 87 percent in Urbana.

But there are also big challenges, as you all know. About half the kids in the public schools come from low-income families. Concerns about the environment and educational quality in some of our schools are no secret. A lot of the physical plant is old, with substantial deferred maintenance and HVAC systems that are not conducive to good teaching or learning environments. And, I'm not sure we're doing enough for kids who are talented but different — in the arts, for example, or in what used to be called shop and home economics.

What we can do to help is very important and pretty simple:

• We can contribute to the Foundation we are celebrating tonight.

• We can involve ourselves in our children's and grandchildren's schools and ask the principal and teachers, "How can we help?"

• We can insist on excellent leadership at both the system level and in individual schools.

• We can support good tax and bond proposals to improve the schools.

• And, there's one another idea I want to introduce tonight.

I recently learned from CUSF and school officials that our public school teachers spend, on average, nearly $500 apiece annually out of their own pockets. For what? For classroom materials and supplies and other things they deem important for the kids, but for which there is no budget.

This seems wrong to me and to others with whom I've spoken, including Chancellor Herman and leaders from the private sector, health care and education in our towns.

We've resolved to do something about it. And you can help.

Our idea is simple. Let's create a fund that our teachers can tap easily, through a one-page online application administered by CUSF, so they can purchase things they need to teach our kids better — and not have to spend so much of their own money to do it.

The total need is $200,000 a year, and we'd really like to raise three years' worth of funding to take this financial burden off our teachers. That's $600,000.

But let's get off to a strong start by setting a goal we can achieve with confidence. A number of us in the room this evening have made commitments, large and small, so that as of today, we're at $130,000 against the first-year goal of $200,000. Let's raise the additional $70,000 to lock in next year's support. Then we'll work on raising the rest of what we need for the next two years.

We ask each of you to consider making a commitment to help us reach these goals. This seems like a great way to express our appreciation to our teachers and take a financial burden off them.

Let me end by once again thanking you for your support of the Foundation and the Champaign-Urbana public schools. They're the key to our kids having the brilliant futures we all want for them.

Thank you.