CHICAGO - Governor Pat Quinn issued the following statement on the sixth anniversary of the NIU tragedy of Feb. 14, 2008:

"Today is a day to reflect. Six years ago today, Illinois lost five young men and women in a tragedy that shook the entire nation. We will never forget the pain and sadness that we all felt when tragedy hit home.

"Since that day, we have grown by coming together as a community. The NIU family came together to remember the joy we shared with those we lost and the lessons we can all learn from them.

"Five bells will be rung today at NIU in memory of Catalina Garcia, Daniel Parmenter, Gayle Dubowski, Julianna Gehant and Ryanne Mace. We will never forget them.

"May God rest their immortal souls, and may we always use the example of their families and community in finding strength in difficult times."

PLATTEVILLE, WI (02/14/2014)(readMedia)-- University of Wisconsin-Platteville announced its 2013 fall semester Dean's List. Students receive this academic honor in the College of Business, Industry, Life Science and Agriculture and the College of Liberal Arts and Education must achieve a 3.75 grade point average and students in the College of Engineering, Math and Science must earn a 3.5 grade point average.

Among those who made the Dean's List were,

Ryan Cady from DeWitt, IA,

Thomas Farrell from Rock Falls, IL,

Sarah Jacobs from Leclaire, IA,

Micah Klahn from Wheatland, IA,

Brandon Lane from Donahue, IA,

Erin Litterst from Milan, IL,

Hannah McManus from Reynolds, IL,

Eric Neirynck from Rock Island, IL,

Dugan Repass from Sterling, IL,

Allison Wells from Moline, IL,

UW-Platteville, founded in 1846, is located in the southwestern corner of Wisconsin, near the Iowa and Illinois borders. The University, the fastest-growing four-year school in the 13-college University of Wisconsin System, enrolls more than 8,000 undergraduate students.

by Kara Kerwin

For being the U.S.'s most-watched live event ever, Super Bowl XLVIII was pretty uninspiring.

What was inspiring, however, was the uplifting ad Microsoft ad featuring former NFL safety and ALS patient Steve Gleason, along with other people with disabilities, using innovative new technologies to make life easier. Gleason's use of a Microsoft product called the Surface gave him the ability to provide voicing for the commercial in heart-rending fashion.

The ad opens with a simple question on the screen as Gleason (in tech-aided voice-over) asks: "What is technology?" As the answers come, "...it unites us..." "...It inspires us..." "...It has taken us to places we never thought we would go..." emotional scenes of tech in action are shown, including a child running on a pair of prosthetic legs, a deaf woman excitedly using an implant to hear a doctor, and a elderly man once blind now able to use a computer efficiently, exclaiming, "Now I can do whatever I want!" The ad concludes with a simple tagline: 'Empowering us all.'

It's an effective promo. Even though a vast majority of us don't know the technological workings of helping a blind man see, who can argue with the ultimate outcome? It's common sense, really.

As I add another view to the two million the video already has on YouTube, I catch a classroom?pause, rewind, and instant replay. It must have been just a millisecond's worth of a clip, but it's there. A classroom full of students ecstatically shares a lesson with another group of their peers remotely through video chat. "Wow,"I think to myself. "That's common sense too, right?" Sadly, America doesn't treat it as such, at least not in implementation. The concept is agreeable and runs seamlessly with the rest of the ad's message. For all the first-down tech innovation we apply to our lives' every facet, we fail to take the education of our nation's children with us to the end zone. Each generation of our students will have lives more immersed in tech than the last. America's first-graders were born after the iPhone was released.

"What can it do?" the commercial asks.

Ninth-grader Vincent Zhou, the 2013 U.S. Figure Skating Junior Men's National Champion, is an online student who one day might be a part of the same Olympic games that are happening now in Sochi, Russia. Vincent is also among the three hundred thousand U.S. students who attended school online last year, and he knows full well what it can do. Vincent goes to Capistrano Connections Academy in California. Young athletes like Vincent are interested in digital learning, whether wholly online or blended, so they can balance a busy training schedule, just one of many reasons families around the country make the decision to take an alternative approach to education.

Online public schools mix typical class structure with the ease of online learning. With no tuition requirement for most online schools, over thirty states offered full-time online schools in multiple districts, respectively, at the end of 2012. Some online schools belong to a local school district, like Appleton School District in northern Wisconsin. Through online schooling, a student can attend school in Appleton despite living over 100 miles away. No wonder over 60 percent of Americans support digital and blended learning.

Students who graduate from the Ohio Connections Academy, a school authorized by the Ohio Council of Community Schools, receive the exact same diploma as their traditional school peers. Connections is one of a growing number of national educators providing online resources and curriculum to public and private schools across all community demographics. At Connections, parents and teachers work together to provide several lines of support at home and elsewhere. Schools like Connections provide online portals and digital tools to help students stay organized with everything they need at their fingertips.

Nexus Academy, a blended learning educator with locations across multiple states, uses daily online lectures as students do most of their schoolwork independently, meeting regularly to discuss progress and set unique goals with teachers and parents, through face-to-face meetings and video calls.

Construction for a brand new Wheaton High School is underway in Silver Spring, MD as part of Montgomery County's new plan to infuse "new innovative strategies" into students' education. But the innovation that Schools Superintendent Joshua Starr defines as "embracing the new" is in stark contrast to the common sense applications from that Super Bowl commercial. The recognition for the need is there. Will we continue to build new housing for old, tired methods, or will we make education adapt to our students, what they need, and the lives they will live beyond schooling?

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Kara Kerwin is President of The Center for Education Reform, a K-12 education policy and advocacy organization based in Washington, DC.

During his State of the Union address, the President said that success is limited only by the "strength of our work ethic and scope of our dreams."  By pointing out "the son of a barkeep is Speaker of the House," the President identified a unifying principle in which 535 lawmakers and the President can agree.  America is the land of opportunity.  Americans enjoy an inherent right to work for their own success and keep the lion's share of what they've earned.

To allow space for a thriving economy and civil society in which Americans can pursue their own dreams, the nation's founders enshrined principles of self-governance in the U.S. Constitution that created separation of powers among three branches of government.  The people's branch makes the laws.  The executive branch enforces the laws, and the judicial branch interprets the laws.

That's why it's alarming to hear the President report to America that he will bypass Congress when he sees fit.  It appears he's prepared to circumvent the Constitution and ignore our system of checks and balances.  Armed with his phone and a pen, the President has signaled he will unilaterally evade the will of the people as expressed through one of the co-equal branches of government.  Considering steps already taken by this Administration in the last year, it is cause for concern when the President says that 2014 will be a "year of action."

Keep in mind where the Obama administration already has taken liberties with its interpretation of the Constitution and laws passed by Congress:

Advice and Consent. The Supreme Court in January heard oral arguments to determine whether President Obama overstepped a constitutional boundary by appointing nominees to the National Labor Relations Board.  The President claimed the Senate was in recess, unable to provide advice and consent.  However, the Senate was holding pro forma sessions, not adjourned in recess.

Controlled Substances Act. The Obama Administration sent a dangerous, mixed signal to youth and local law enforcement across America when the Department of Justice announced it would not prioritize the prosecution of the large-scale trafficking and sale of marijuana. The Controlled Substances Act criminalizes the cultivation, trafficking, sale and use of marijuana. I'm hearing from Iowa law enforcement of a troubling increased presence of marijuana stemming from Colorado's legalization of medical marijuana.  With full legalization now in effect, this problem is likely to worsen.  As co-chairman of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, I agree with a top official at the Drug Enforcement Administration who testified that efforts to legalize marijuana are "reckless and irresponsible."  Marijuana is widely recognized as a gateway drug to other illicit, lethal drugs.  Considering the implications to local law enforcement, public health and traffic safety, the Justice Department's "wink and a nod" approach to enforcing the Controlled Substances Act is more than disappointing.

Affordable Care Act. The Administration's signature health care law had a miserable debut in October with the rollout of HealthCare.gov.  Aside from on-going sign-up snafus, the President has enforced the Affordable Care Act as with the help of a roulette wheel, picking and choosing which mandates, waivers, penalties and fees to enforce.  It's a gamble the nation's recovering economy and growing national debt cannot afford.  Everyone agrees the Affordable Care Act has systemic flaws.  Now the President is using his pen to re-write the law without congressional consent.  It sure would be helpful if the President also had a magic wand up his sleeve.  He could use it to jump-start economic growth since productivity will drop over the next decade when as many as 2.5 million workers drop out of the workforce due to the new disincentive to work created by the Affordable Care Act, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.  When people exit the workforce, it's bad for economic growth.

So much for the President's call for a "year of action."  The Administration is on track for a year of overreaction.  Overstepping constitutional limits or enforcing laws for political convenience sow bad seeds into our system of self-government.  If allowed to take root, their growth would have a corrosive effect on the people's right to be heard through their elected representatives.

Centralizing power into the executive branch renders the commander-in-chief the only arbiter of the public good.  Therein lies the rub.  Limited government, separated into three branches, protects the individual rights of citizens.  Each branch has constitutional oversight authority to prevent overgrowth of one branch over the other on America's tree of freedom and liberty.

It's time for a reality check.  In keeping with the President's stated commitment to unprecedented levels of openness and transparency, I've written to the U.S. Attorney General to direct the Department of Justice to publicly disclose its legal analyses of all executive orders by the President.  Since passage of the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Attorney General has been authorized to render opinions on matters of law and issues of constitutionality.

The American people and Congress ought to know if the President's executive orders have withstood rigorous constitutional review.  If the President can't persuade the people's branch on the merit of his ideas, the American people have a right to know if his ideas are being implemented in a way that is consistent with the Constitution.