Nicky Cheese

Earlier this week, the creation of Advance Illinois:

Jim Edgar, former Governor of Illinois, and Bill Daley, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, came together today with Illinois civic and business leaders and the Bill & Melinda Gates and Joyce foundations to launch Advance Illinois, a bipartisan effort to push toward improved public education in Illinois.

Illinois public education stinks. The organization recognizes this. Good. That’s the first step:

…22 percent of high school students are college-ready across the four ACT testing areas, and fewer than 30 percent of Illinois students demonstrate proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, placing the state at or below national averages in all areas and at all grade levels.

So what exactly are the strategies, the particular tactics, to this end? What is their plan to improve public education?

<Crickets>

Yeah… that’s hard to tell. Really hard. Arguably painful. I mean, watch this story from Monday’s Chicago Tonight. Tell me if you can figure out what their plan is. Chicago Tonight spends over five minutes on the story and all they come up with is a “listening tour”, whatever that means.

You will notice, however – taking a page out of the Obama playbook – that a big part of their solution is “Change”.

Yes, “Change”. Throughout the broadcast, in fact, viewers hear the word “change” 13 times. 13 times!

Like the Obama campaign, “Change” for Advance Illinois remains undefined and thereby, utterly meaningless. That’s okay though. People just want “Change”. Me? I’d rather they be feeding me some more of that “Same”; at least it’d be honest.