chet everett

While Illinois is in fact 4th in Technology & Innovation:

Technology & Innovation Rankings

This appears to be a subset of the main article: America's Top State for Business 2012

Very different view. That puts Illinois squarely in the bottom half of all states. Not good.

While I certainly wish that our state was better at creating jobs and given more people hope that they can at least maintain their quality of life the fact is...

Western Springs is in Cook Co. It has uniformly desirable schools / neighborhoods, which should come as no surprise as you can probably pick a costly half gallon of delicous milk in a heavy glass bottle from the Oberweiss shop across from the RR depot AND LUG IT BACK HOME from any spot in town in about 30 minutes. It is extremely compact. Neighboring Hinsdale lies partially within Cook Co, but largely inside DuPage Co. It is the rare town where every single one of its elementary schools and middle...

While I admit to painting with a broad brush, it should be obvious that the masses of people that continue see the expansions of Naperville and DuPage Co in general stand in stark contrast to the shrinking base of people willing to put up with the nonsense of Chicago and the old suburbs of Cook Co,

It should be self evident that a whole lot of people, some of them minorities themselves, steadfastly stand with me in saying just how nice Naperville is and how rare it is for people to...

I don't think that any sane person that read my post would see anything subtle or invisible that compares the schools in Oak Park to the worst of CPS. I worked in CPS. All but a relative handful of CPS schools are terrible and many of the ones with good test results still have to deal with an almost unbelievable headwind of bueracratic nonsense.
The schools in Oak Park are in the main pretty good. I have friends that work in them as well as friends and colleageus that have sent their kids...

I am a former teacher. I see a lot of my former colleagues, especially like this weekend now that school is out. We all agree that there is clearly some blame for problems of low job growth, flat wages and poor broad economic prospects on the lack of value that too many place in a top quality education. Pretty much all the friends that are still teaching have kids that are not pursuing careers in education, they can see first hand that there are jobs that demand less of one's time and have greater...