Last spring, the General Assembly may have squandered an historic opportunity to reform the tax system and finally fund Illinois' schools adequately. But the conversation is far from dead. After a nearly five-year hiatus, the group that's quietly pushed the debate over school funding reform -- the Education Funding Advisory Board (EFAB) -- reconvened last Thursday to put an updated price tag on education in Illinois. The gubernatorial appointees' forthcoming recommendations are sure to reinforce the dire need to pump more money into Illinois schools. And that, Rep. David Miller (D-Dolton) told us during a phone interview Friday afternoon, will become "the driver" in the next push for reform.

After all, the panel's most recent report (PDF), which was delivered back in 2005, was the framework for Sen. James Meeks' HB 174 -- not to mention with every major proposal the Chicago Democrat has floated to overhaul education funding. Politically, EFAB's recommendations -- namely to raise the foundation level, or minimum per pupil spending -- have been key in building momentum for reform because "both sides of the aisle agree that it's a fair assessment," Miller tells us. Moreover, since releasing its first findings in 2002, the panel "has at least set the goal" for what state should be spending per child, he added.

But as WBEZ's Linda Lutton reports, political reality is another story. Even five years after EFAB recommended that the state spend $6,405 per student, the state has yet to hit that magic number:

Illinois has only funded schools at the recommended level once since the panel began. This coming school year, the state will give districts about $6,200 per student. That’s less than what the panel last recommended—four years ago.

That minimum spending figure is based on a fairly simple analysis. Researchers zeroed in on Illinois school districts that consistently post the highest academic performance at the lowest expense. A pattern soon developed. Once districts hit a spending threshold for instructional expenses including teacher salaries, textbooks, and computers, at least two-thirds of all students managed to meet or exceed the  state's academic benchmarks. Last fall, the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability (CTBA) looked a little closer at those districts. Not surprisingly, they found that districts meeting EFAB's spending recommendation --  $6,915 per pupil in 2008 -- continued to succeed. The report (PDF) "Money Matters" explains (emphasis added):

[A]t spending levels up to $5,000 per student in instructional expense, roughly half the school districts perform as predicted or better, and half perform worse. As the instructional expense increases to $7,000 per child, however, student performance also increases, to the point that substantially all the districts perform at or above the predicted level—that is, academic outcomes improve with an enhanced instructional expense of between $1,000-$2,200 per child.

Only 4.5 percent of all Illinois school districts have the luxury of forgoing the foundation level grants. But the vast majority, 77 percent, rely heavily on them. That said, it's not hard to imagine how far an additional investment in Illinois' students would go in reversing the state's academic slide.

"It's easy to say 'We want better schools,'" Miller points out. "But this tells the public exactly what it's going to cost." As of last year, the price tag was $3 billion, an investment that the state can't afford to push off forever.