Illinois Public Media News

When schools shifted to remote learning in March 2020, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made the unprecedented decision to let states cancel standardized testing. Every state, including Illinois, did so, but that allowance did not extend to 2021. With a second round of pandemic-era standardized tests beginning this spring, we considered the current state assessment landscape in Illinois and how it may need to change going forward with an Illinois state senator and leaders from education groups.

To mark Presidents' Day, we talked about an overlooked aspect of the American presidency — the way the institution affected photography, and how America itself was influenced by the way presidents have been photographed. We were joined by a historian of photography and author of Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital.

In the 1830s, the U.S. government illegally auctioned off more than 1,280 acres of land belonging to Chief Shab-eh-nay in southern DeKalb County. Now, 170 years later, lawmakers are trying to right that wrong. To talk about it, The 21st was joined by Chieg Shab-eh-nay's fourth-generation great-grandson and current chairman of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation.

Our guest for the second half of the show has represented workers going up against their employers, argued before the US Supreme Court, and is the author of half a dozen or so books on American politics, law, and labor — including his latest, The History of Democracy Has Yet to be Written: How we Have to Learn to Govern All Over Again. It’s about his long-shot campaign for Congress in the Obama era, and his ideas for fixing what’s wrong with American democracy.

Workers at one of the world’s largest coffee chains are leading an unprecedented effort to unionize their workplace, and one of the most recent to vote to unionize is here in Illinois at the Peoria campustown location. The 21st was joined by two baristas from that location to talk about the unionization efforts, as well as a history professor to give some context about the labor movement at large.