Five education-related organizations from across the state developed Vision 2030—a unified, strategic blueprint for K-12 public education in Illinois. These partners included Illinois Association of School Administrators, Illinois Association of School Boards, Illinois Principals Association, Illinois Association of School Business Officials, and Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools. Other collaborators included the Superintendents’ Commission for the Study of Demographics, Illinois Alliance of Administrators of Special Education, and Illinois Association of Rural and Small Schools.

The Vision 2030 workgroup included more than 100 educational leaders from these eight associations. Some workgroup members were appointed by peers in their region and others were selected by the statewide associations with a goal of ensuring the workgroup was diverse in geography and perspective.

In addition, Vision 2030 was informed by a statewide survey completed by more than 1,000 educational leaders that helped ensure that advocacy goals outlined in Vision 2030 align with the needs and priorities local school district officials.

For any initiative, it’s good to set a goal and target date. Given the success of Vision 2020, it felt natural and logical to launch Vision 2030 using the same five-year timeline.

This approach acknowledges two very important variables: 1) some of the areas of this work require immediate attention and to extend ourselves out beyond five-years would divert from significant issues that we must urgently address, and 2) best practices in education are changing so rapidly that to look beyond five-years could leave us stuck with outdated solutions and/or solutions for problems that no longer exist or are no longer relevant.

We are still mapping our specific priorities and implementation timeline. However, we anticipate that Vision 2030 partners and collaborators will be in continuous dialogue over the next five years with our members and with lawmakers to advance the initiatives laid out in Vision 2030.

Updates will be posted on illinoisvision2030.com. When a specific legislative proposal rooted in Vision 2030 is introduced, we would welcome the support of parents and community members by contacting their legislators, submitting public testimony, and working with their local school boards to promote Vision 2030 and its priorities.

Future-focused learning is about reshaping our schools and classrooms and redefining student success to reflect and prepare students for all the different ways that the world and economy continue to change. We need to be more intentional about ensuring that our students graduate with the right skills and clarity of interest allowing them to be productive in a rapidly changing economy. This includes:

• Promote future-driven skills that allow for more college and career exploration. We want to engage students in thinking about their pathways to college and career sooner—as early as elementary school (grades K-5). At the high school level, this could include some college credits earned through advanced placement or dual enrollment (value in tax dollars spent locally) or skill-building through career and technical education programs,
   
  • • Enhancing student safety and well-being. We have to acknowledge that students learn best, and educators teach most effectively, when they feel safe and connected to one another and to their communities. We also need to ensure that we are teaching and learning in safe and state-of-the-art buildings. The Vision 2030 pillars of predictable funding and future-focused learning pillars focus on safety – both physical and emotional safety.
       
    • Attracting and retaining a high-quality, diverse educator pipeline. Vision 2030 is focused on providing support for local school districts to develop new approaches to attract and retain excellent educators who have both the subject-matter expertise, compassion, cultural competency and commitment to help all students at all levels achieve their full potential.
       
    • Promoting curriculum and instructional flexibility to meet the unique needs of local communities. We must encourage and preserve time and financial resources for local curriculum innovation and programming to best meet the needs of students in our communities.

Shared accountability was also a hallmark of Vision 2020. What happened was that only some of the framework of the Illinois Balanced Accountability Model advocated for in Vision 2020 was adopted in Illinois’ ESSA plan. Unfortunately, the federal plan ended up placing more emphasis on standardized assessments than Vision 2020 supported.

It’s important to keep in mind, when it comes to state assessments, school designations and an accountability system, there are a lot of voices and ideas around what that should look like. The next steps for shared accountability set out in Vision 2030 include ensuring that the Illinois assessment system is a timely, usable measure of student proficiency and growth over time.

We acknowledge that these are tough economic times, but ensuring that our students are educated in safe facilities that provide them with meaningful college and career readiness opportunities that they need for postsecondary success needs to be a priority in Illinois.  This investment will benefit not just the students, but their communities, as well as Illinois employers that will benefit from a qualified and educated workforce. While the legislature has consistently invested in the EBF formula over the years, we have not seen significant investments in school construction projects or school facilities from the State in the past couple of decades. That lack of investment in capital projects unfairly shifts that burden to local property taxpayers. We need to explore predictable and consistent ways that the State can help fund school facilities across.

A majority of Illinois’ 102 counties have approved the countywide facility sales tax. Vision 2030 calls for the countywide sales tax to be expanded across the state, including Cook County. This $0.01 tax has proven to be a successful source of revenue to repair and rebuild school buildings. We believe there needs to be more flexibility for more districts to leverage this revenue stream to support facilities improvement, school safety and mental health programs for students. Local school boards could also opt to leverage this revenue to reduce property taxes, facilitating  a more diverse and economically responsive tax base to meet the needs of their local school and community.