This week the Illinois Chapter of Last Stand for Children First joined students across the state in celebrating historic legislation that is now only awaiting the Governor's signature. SB7 will finally free school children from the threat of teachers unions complaining about having too many students in classrooms or going on strike--a problem that has plagued the Chicago Public Schools since their last strike in 1987. I am not going to write about SB7 though, enough reformers are lauding it already. Instead, I am going to look at an exciting new trend coming out of Chicago that I am referring to as the Bialystock Method or Producerism. This shrewd move by Mayor elect Rahm Emanuel far surpasses anything I have seen elswhere.
To understand the Bialystock Method, you must do yourself a favor and go rent the original 1968 version of Mel Brooks' classing movie The Producers. I love the original version of the movie and the play that spun off of it, but was less impressed with he 2005 movie version of the play.
In The Producers, Gene Wilder plays a mild-mannered accountant named Leo Bloom and Zero Mostel plays a washed up old theatrical producer named Max Bialystock. In doing Max's books, Leo discovers that you could
