Who We Are

We are educators. We currently teach or taught our whole career. We are professors, instructors, and teacher’s assistants. We span across the district and are working to elect Dan Seals as our next Congressman from the 10th Congressional District.

Why We Support Dan

Dan Seals understands all too well the importance of education. As the father of three young daughters, he also understands providing that education can be a daunting task. Dan has always admired how hard educators work to make their students shine. And this makes us stand behind him in his quest to represent the 10th District all the more noteworthy.

We know that Dan will continue to fight to give every child access to early childhood education and make college affordable for all those who wish to attend, and that is why we stand committed to supporting Dan Seals for Congress.

Illinois Federation of Teachers Endorse Dan!

“The Illinois Federation of Teachers is proud to endorse Dan Seals for the 10th Congressional District. Dan has a track record of working tirelessly to improve the lives of the people living in his district, and we know he will continue that leadership in Congress. Dan Seals personifies the type of leader we want in Washington fighting for public education.”

- IFT President Ed Geppert, Jr.

The Illinois Federation of Teachers represents 103,000 men and women who are teachers and paraprofessionals in school districts throughout Illinois, faculty and staff at Illinois’ community colleges and universities, public employees under every statewide elected constitutional officer, and retirees.

Dan on the Issues

Investing in Early Education

Study after study has shown that Head Start is an effective tool for helping children—especially poor children—to get off on the right foot and reduce the achievement gap that forms over time. For every dollar we put into Head Start programs, experts estimate our society gets $9 of benefit. Increased funding to this program is a winning issue for our country and our children. So, Dan’s goal is to make Head Start universally available. In the interim, we can increase the bang for the buck this program creates by ensuring Head Start teachers meet higher education standards and Head Start administrative staff have more stable funding streams to guarantee continuity for Head Start students.

Overhauling No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act

NCLB began with good intentions aimed at increased accountability, but has failed to achieve those ends. Dan proposes four major changes to the law.

First, NCLB has to be fully funded. NCLB has not lived up to its obligations to fund school districts, but then penalizes those districts for not living up to unrealistic standards. Second, we need increased flexibility of standards to account for different subgroups (such as ESL or Special Needs students) within each school, rather than treat all students as identical. Third, we need a more comprehensive way of measuring progress. An overemphasis on test-taking forces teachers to teach to the test, which isn’t the same as teaching. By reforming this act, we can make schools more accountable and effective in the interest of creating a better educational system.

Helping Teachers Earn More

Dan believes we need to make teaching a more desirable career for our nation’s best and brightest, while also working to see that every school has access to the best teachers available. One way to encourage more Americans to teach is to tie their pay to their performance. The Teacher Incentive Fund managed by the U.S. Department of Education supports performance-based compensation incentives for teachers and administrators working in at-risk settings. This is a program we should support.

Making College More Affordable

Dan recognizes the need for our nation to return to making long-term investments in education–shifting from high-interest loans to grants–to ease the financial burden placed on students.

Dan has proposed collapsing all of the different higher education tax incentives into one, easy-to-understand $3,000 tax credit, which would cover half of the cost of tuition at the average public university. He has advocated for expanding access to the credit to more middle class families by making it available to individuals making up to $80,000, and married couples making up to $160,000. Also, under the current law, families who have no income tax liability—nearly half of all families with children—are not eligible for the available tax credits. Seals’ proposal would benefit these families for the first time by making the credit partially refundable.

Dan also supports shifting resources from loans to Pell Grants where possible. This will help reduce the crushing debt that can break a young career before it even gets started.

See Dan’s Endorsements