Iowamom, I will echo some of the statements. As far as k-12 its hit or miss on the district. Some are very good (my kids HS is ranked in the top 100 in the country) and others not so good.
As far as colleges go, I think it says a lot that a lot of our students first instinct is to look out of state for the better public schools. Illinois is good, but a lot of kids look to go to Iowa, Indiana or WI rather then stay instate. More and More kids looking at MSU now a days as well.
Look very closely at the financial situation of the school you are looking at. A few of our public colleges are on the verge of going under due to the states financial situation. Chicago State was the most public, but I have hear that Eastern and Western IL had/are having issues as well.
This is about a year old, and we now have a state budget, so Im guessing the landscape has changed some, but from what I understand many of our state school still have junk ratings
http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/2...education/index.html