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Chairwoman Hightman said, “So, what do we need to do to help the state become a member of
that network? Is it really just a matter of persuading the Governor?”
Mr. Regenstein said, “No. I do not know that that is the issue. I think the Governor’s office is
supportive. I think that there are some people in the K-12 community who would like a little more time
to come to a place of peace on this before officially joining. But it may be that, in fact, I am
underestimating the willingness. So, I think that those are discussions that are appropriately carried on
between the Governor’s office, the business community, the Illinois Board of Higher Education, and the
State Board of Education because if all of them are, in fact, ready to participate, then there would be no
reason not to join.”
Chairwoman Hightman said, “Is it better to wait for the report to be done in December before we
move to join that network? Is there a reason to wait?”
Mr. Regenstein said, “I do not know that there is a reason to wait. Certainly the report may be a
forcing event that helps people understand the importance of the network, but if there is a willingness to
join the network before the report comes out, I am sure Mike would be happy to have us.”
Ms. Erwin said, “I think that a lot of the work we talked about in the legislative updates really
goes to trying to take the steps to have all of the education systems working together. So, again, thanks to
Elaine Johnson and Illinois College Community Board, Chris Koch and the State Board of Education.
But we need to know -- this is relatively new -- it has been uncommon in Illinois for the education silos to
work together. So, I think part of what Elliot is referring to is a comfort level that we are not trying to
take over your turf, or we are not trying to do this or that, but that it actually is in managing those
transition points that we can all improve. On behalf of the Board, and I hope the rest of the higher
education community, we have a lot of work to do. We have not engaged collectively the higher
education community to define what Mike Cohen just described -- what does it mean to be college and
career ready? And are we ready to engage our faculties in working through what that really means? It is
not just pointing at K-12 and say, well they are not preparing them. So, I hope we join the ADP network,
too. But that does not mean that in higher education we can all sit back and say there is nothing we can
do. We have to because of the Memorandum of Understanding, because of the P-20 bill, and many of
these other things, we have to begin engaging the higher education community to answer that definitional
question.”
Chairwoman Hightman said, “Actually that was my next question. How does this fit, how does
what you all are doing fit into the P-20 council?”
Mr. Regenstein said, “We see the P-20 council as another forum in which these issues can be
worked on collaboratively. One of the things that I think we would like to do as part of the MOU process
is work with that council because that may be an opportunity to build consensus across systems that --
obviously, it is wonderful to be able to go to the State Board instead of the Board of Higher Education
and to talk about these issues, but if that becomes a gathering place where people can come together and
set a common agenda that each of the individual Boards feels invested in, then we would want to work
with that council to help it make high-quality decisions based on good research and knowledge of the
policies in other states as well.”
Ms. Karon said, “We have had a lot of opportunity to discuss this and particularly what you are
talking about, but one of the issues is that in order to have an investment in the final product, there has got
to be some dissemination, some understanding, some discussion one-to-one on what this really means. I
think that terms -- and there has been enough research and there have been enough programs that have
