More casualties of organized gang warfare. Dr. James Kelly of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago estimates that up to 250,000 concussions, many overlooked or minimized, have already occurred this season on this country’s football fields.
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Why does the U.S. spend more per pupil on education than any other country–and get so much less? According to UIC education professor Herbert Walberg, in a new report published by the Palatine-based Heartland Institute, it’s because we’ve been doing things backward. For the last 50 years educators have been busy consolidating schools, enlarging districts, and lobbying for more state money and less local money in education. But Walberg compared the scores eighth-graders in 37 states received on a national mathematics test and found that states with the highest scores have the smallest schools, the smallest school districts, and the smallest state share of education funding. Evidently there’s no substitute for local control and the personal touch.
“One White House aide notes that [Bill] Daley is one of the few people he has seen in close proximity to the President who are not scrambling for attention or favor, not trying to demonstrate their place at the top of the pack,” writes Sidney Blumenthal in the New Yorker (November 29). “Daley’s political identity is rooted not in this court but in something larger: the history of the Democratic Party….No matter what happens to him in Washington, his identity remains constant. Daley’s detachment about power is derived from his intimacy with it. For him, image doesn’t dictate substance; rather, in accordance with the dictum of Chicago’s greatest architect, Louis Sullivan, form follows function.”
