Education reform in Illinois features two major storylines: politics and policy. On the political front, two powerful forces - the business community and teacher unions - have competing proposals. On the policy end of things, the primary educational question is whether and to what degree teacher performance will be a factor in school-district workforce decisions, from budget-related layoffs to dismissals to tenure.

As the law stands now, layoffs and tenure are simply functions of teachers' years of service and don't take into account whether students are actually learning. Firing a tenured teacher is time-consuming and costly, and the current teacher-evaluation system, all sides agree, is ineffective. Common-sense reform is long overdue.

Given Illinois' history and reputation, however, one might expect politics to dictate the outcome at the expense of sound policy. Somewhat surprisingly, the substance of the different proposals appears to be getting a careful vetting, and politics have thus far taken a back seat.

One of the main reasons the Democratic Party did so poorly across the nation last year and lost ground in Illinois was the defection of senior citizens to the Republican Party.

On Election Day 2006, national exit polling showed voters 65 and older split their ballots 49-49 between the two parties. In Illinois, however, senior citizens went with Democrat Rod Blagojevich over Republican Judy Baar Topinka by 10 points, 50-40.

Last year, national exit polling showed Republicans with a huge 59-38 margin over Democrats among seniors. In Illinois, the exit polls showed that Pat Quinn lost the senior-citizen vote to Republican Bill Brady by 17 points, 55-38. Quinn ended up beating Brady by less than 32,000 votes. Blagojevich won his last election by more than 10 times that amount: 367,000. The lost senior vote accounted for more than half the difference between those two margins.

So some Democrats may be forgiven for cringing last week after reading the headlines about how Senate President John Cullerton was floating the idea of taxing retirement income. Their party needs to woo that all-important and rapidly growing demographic back to the fold, not alienate it even more. Those stories probably didn't sit well at all with the oldsters. There's a reason why only five states tax all retirement income, and it ain't fiscal.

If you thought that Illinois government might get a tiny breather after raising income taxes, think again.

The Illinois House's new revenue projection for next fiscal year, which begins in July, is $759 million lower than the governor's. And the House's forecast is also $2.2 billion below Governor Pat Quinn's projected spending for the coming fiscal year.

Quinn's proposed budget was whacked last month by Democrats and Republicans alike for its brutal slashing of several human-service programs. But even with those Quinn cuts, if the House revenue forecast is used in the final product, they'll still have to find $2.2 billion in additional spending reductions.

The bad news doesn't end there. According to some revised numbers issued by the auditor general this past Friday, next year's required state pension payment, including debt service, will be $6.2 billion.

"The child is not the mere creature of the state." - United States Supreme Court, Pierce V. Society of Sisters

Not only is Alford V. Greene the first major case involving child protective services to go before the U.S. Supreme Court in 21 years, but it is also one of the most important parents' rights cases ever to reach the court. If it goes the right way - i.e., to bolster parents' rights - it will mean that state agents will have to obtain a court order to question a child at school. If it goes the wrong way, however - which the Obama administration is advocating, along with 40 state attorneys general, law-enforcement agencies, social workers, prosecutors, and defense attorneys - it will be a serious blow to parental rights as well as the rights of children in the public schools.

The particulars of the case are egregious enough, but they pale in comparison to the government's effrontery in insisting that parents essentially forfeit their rights when they send their children to a public school.