Juan Williams has released a 30 minute documentary on school reform in Chicago. “A Tale of Two Missions” features one of the great education successes in Chicago, Noble Network of Charter Schools. Opposite Noble is the Chicago Teachers Union, whose rhetorics as always is hostile to reform.

Etta James has passed away. She grew up in California. Like so many artists in the twentieth century, it was in Chicago where she transformed her talent into greatness. She belonged to Illinois for only a little while, but by the time she left here, her music already belonged to pop fans everywhere, forever.

She didn’t write many of her best songs. It didn’t matter. It’s impossible to imagine anyone else singing them.

My friend and colleague Scott Moody released a paper earlier this week. It looks at IRS data that tracks, down to the county, where people are choosing to move (to and from):

• On a net basis, 1 taxpayer left Illinois every 10 minutes between 1995 and 2009.
• These 806,000 people took to other states more than $26 billion in taxable income.
• In 2009 alone, Illinois lost 40,000 people to 43 other states. That figure is akin to half of the population of Decatur moving to another state in a single year.

Illinois lost people to every one of its border states.

The IRS data lags more than a year. So it doesn’t even tell us how the tax hike in January impacted outmigration. Coincidentally, not one but two other studies were released right after Scott’s that contain 2011 information from other data sources. From the AP:

United Van Lines has been tracking moving trends since 1977. Its study released to The Associated Press on Wednesday looked at all moves that involved either going to or leaving a state or the District of Columbia…

For 2011, United tracked 113,916 interstate moves from Jan. 1 through Dec. 9. For the fourth year in a row, Washington, D.C., had the highest percentage of inbound moves, 62.2 percent…

Illinois and New Jersey tied for the largest outbound migration, with 60.5 percent of moves involving those states heading out.

Illinois: Illinois had the second-highest net domestic migration loss, sending 79,000 of its residents to other states. Illinois had ranked 49th in net domestic migration in the previous decade, with a 615,000 loss. Unlike the other biggest losers, New York and California, the Illinois rate in the single year of 2011 exceeded its annual rate of net domestic migration loss between 2000 and 2009.

Chicago and Milwaukee have historically shared twin fates economically. When employment is up in one place, it’s typically up in the other. Not so, of late.

A new study by the Chicago Fed shows that Milwaukee has seen a considerable bounce in total employment while things have remained stagnant in Chicago.

The sudden divergence of employment trends says a lot about both towns. Had Chicago mirrored Milwaukee’s job growth, about 100,000 more people would be employed across the city. That should beg serious policy questions.

Milwaukee has benefited from a strong rebound in manufacturing. That industry is less densely located in Chicago–something else that begs policy questions.

Chicago has a heavier concentration of financial firms. The authors point out that Chicago could catch up to Milwaukee if manufacturing declines and financial services boom.

The Milwaukee Brewers hitting coach has left to become the Cubs new manager. Dale Sveum will lead the Chicago Cubs next year.

“…according to the Milwaukee Brewers media guide, he goes by the nickname of ‘Nuts.’…

Sveum was said to be a calming influence in the Brewers’ clubhouse when he was suddenly asked to replace good friend Ned Yost in 2008 with 12 games left in a September that was in full collapse mode…

The Brewers went 6-5 over those first 11 games and faced the Cubs in Milwaukee on the last day of the season, tied with the New York Mets for the wild-card lead.

Sveum left a simple message scrawled on the clubhouse board, ‘‘Give ’em hell’’ — a phrase his late father liked to use and one that’s part of a tattoo on his arm.

The Brewers then beat the Cubs to clinch their first playoff berth since 1982.”

Managing well during collapse mode will come in handy as Cubs manager. Welcome to Illinois Dale. Give ‘em hell.

Illinois’s greatest restaurant conglomerate is the creator of the world’s most mysterious sandwich. Somewhere in McDonald’s Oak Brook headquarters, someone knows why the McRib is back and when it will again disappear. It’s a mystery to the rest of us.

Finally, some data from Willy Staley (whom I’d never heard of before but now will follow avidly).

The blue line is the price of hogs in America over the last decade, and the black lines represent approximate times when McDonald’s has reintroduced the McRib, nationwide or taken it on an almost-nationwide “Farewell Tour” (McD’s has been promising to get rid of the product for years now).

Taxes on beer, wine and hard alcohol could soon be increased in the Chicago area. The Cook County board of commissioners moved closer to a $10.9 million tax hike on sprits, after yesterday’s meeting of the budget committee.

“The only place where there are starter jobs in the economy of Cook County at this point is in the hospitality industry,” said [commissioner Larry] Suffredin. “Increasing taxes like alcohol affects the hospitality industry, it affects the hotels, it affects the restaurants.”

Commissioner Bridget Gainer’s district includes a large swath of the city’s North lakefront and Northwest Side where bars and restaurants dot the Lincoln Park, Lake View, Uptown, Andersonville Peterson Park neighborhoods…

“These places are usually what make our neighborhoods worth living in, and they’re often the first ones to step up when the community needs something whether it’s a school or a baseball team or any of those things.”

The tax hike passed 12-5. Voting against it were Suffredin, Gainers, William Beavers, Earlean Collins and former state representative John Fritchey, all Democrats.

Oddly, Republicans were the ones to deliver the victory. All four GOP commissioners voted Yes.

Richard Boykin, a lobbyist with distributor Crown Imports, said he was surprised to see the four Republicans on the board voting for the measure.

“The Republican Party is, by its very definition, anti-tax,” Boykin said.

Had all four Republicans voted against the tax hike, it would have failed.

The ordinance must again be voted on before it becomes law. Those who prefer to tip their server and not the County can go to IllinoisPolicy.org for more.

Sunday. Beer. Football. Tax Hike. Which one of these doesn’t belong?

This weekend you can enjoy three and fight the fourth at Butch McGuire’s in Chicago, one of Illinois’s best bars.

Chicagoans already pay the highest spirits tax in the nation. In fact, taxes on spirits have been increased four times since 2005. Now Cook County…wants to pile on yet another job-killing tax hike on distilled spirits and tobacco.

Industry analysts predict that these liquor taxes could cost upward of 270 jobs in Cook County, as higher costs squeeze the hospitality industry.

After hundreds of billions of dollars in increased federal taxes out of Washington and a 67 percent state income tax hike out of Springfield, the last thing Chicagoans need is another job-killing tax hike out of Cook County.

WHAT: Opponents of the liquor tax hike will gather at Butch McGuire’s Sunday afternoon to find out why the proposed tax hikes on spirits and tobacco would kill jobs and hurt the economy in Cook County, and what they can do to stop this tax.

WHEN: Press briefing: 2:15 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 13

WHERE: World Famous Butch McGuire’s Pub, 20 W. Division St., Chicago

WHO: Speakers will include…. Bobby McGuire, owner of Butch McGuire’s; Patrick Gleason, Americans for Tax Reform; John O’Hara, Illinois Policy Institute

Southern Illinois has a twisted and brutal history of labor conflict. While the coal industry has withered in that part of the state, loyalties still often lie with private labor in their battles with company management. Perhaps the faculty at Southern Illinois University thought they could capitalize on those sympathies when the professors’ union went on strike earlier this week. The move backfired. From the editorial board of the Southern Illinoisan, the largest daily in the region.

Our view: Striking faculty members at SIU Carbondale have no valid issues. They should return to the classroom today or be replaced Monday.

Our region is chronically beset with poverty and joblessness – troubles exacerbated by the nation’s deep and long recession. Employment at SIU is a career goal for many, a source of envy for many more…

What actually is being sought, and won’t be attained, are ridiculous demands they say are not financial.

In their own words, the FA said it has been offered raises of 0, 1, 1 and 2 percent in the coming four years of a proposed contract. When was your last raise? Can you even remember?

The people holding pickets, or raising their puny clenched fists are privileged to live in the Ivory Tower of Academia. In their previous four-year contract, FA members got raises of 3 percent in 2007, 3 percent in 2008, 3 percent in 2009 and 3.5 percent in 2010. FA members work nine months per year and have the ability to earn more than $135,000 for that period of time – though most make less.

A study printed in the fall of 2010 determined 220 full professors were paid an average $101,385 per nine-month teaching year; 292 associate professors $73,961 for the same time period; and 265 assistant professors $63,438…

If you’re lucky enough to have a job, are you making that kind of money? Would you even consider striking if you’d been offered raises for the coming years – on the heels of raises totaling 12.5 percent from 2007-10.

Jobs are not easily attained and quickly lost in a faltering economy. It is a lesson learned through the affairs of life, a painful reality that soon may confront faculty members foolish enough to honor an ill-considered strike.*

I’m an SIUC alum. While I was in school there, the faculty was threatening to go on strike. Then, as now, the demands of the union seemed vastly out of touch.

As I write this, news is breaking that the strike will end. It’s not hard to see why: a sustained strike on campus would have become a statewide controversy. Considering the ongoing legislative battle in Springfield over pension and retirement benefits, the government labor unions would not want striking university professors as the face of civil service in Illinois.

* The entire editorial is a tour de force, well worth the read.

Graduation rates are the most important performance factor within a school system. Illinois just saw its official graduation rate fall. Does this mean things are getting worse? Not exactly. But there are a number of officials with some explaining to do.

Federal law created tougher data standards for graduation rates, beginning this year. From Diane Rado at the Trib:

The new method, required by the federal government, was used for the first time this year in Illinois, with sobering results: Across the state, about 75 percent of high schools saw small dips to big drops in graduation rates, causing educators to adjust to a new reality.

This “new reality” shouldn’t have caught anyone by surprise. Jay Greene and Education Week have separately been reporting for years that official graduation rates used bunk methods that created inflated results.

In 2008 and 2009 I wrote reports for the Illinois Policy Institute about the coming changes. Looking at 10-year data trends in five districts, I tried to predict what stats would result from the new, more reliable method.For Springfield’s District 186:

…if we adjust the freshman enrollments to eliminate the potential double counting of freshmen who are held back, the district’s ten-year graduation rate is still only 71.7 percent.

When I presented my analysis to district officials, they insisted that these figures were far too low. I suggested that they use a more rigorous method, if only for internal accountability purposes; a blue ribbon commission from the mayor’s office made the same recommendation. Nevertheless the district reported a 2009 graduation rate of 90.2 percent. The following year, 87.8 percent.

But in 2011, when a new state method that actually tracked individual students went into place, the official graduation rate plummeted to 76 percent. Let’s put this in perspective.

A “non-graduation” rate is simply the opposite of the graduation rate. In 2010, Springfield’s official non-graduation rate was 12.2 percent. In 2011 it was double that at 24 percent. The old method understated a critical problem by half.

In Springfield public schools, there are roughly 10,500 students enrolled in preschool through 8th grade. They’ll feed into the district’s high schools. For those kids as a whole, the difference between an 87.8 percent and a 76 percent graduation rate is more than 1,200 dropouts.

Springfield, and as the Trib shows plenty of towns like it, need to get serious about high school reform. The new statistics show that.* An obvious first step would be to bring in people who are running successful high schools in Illinois’s toughest neighborhoods. I nominate Noble Street and Urban Prep.

* The new method of calculating graduation rates must have some loopholes. Chicago Public Schools, according to the new state method, has a 73.8 graduation rate. This is implausibly high. CPS uses a more rigorous method for its own internal accountability purposes, which puts the five-year grad rate at 58.3 percent. The state obviously needs to get even stricter on its graduation data; if that happens the “new reality” for districts like Springfield is going to feel even harsher.