Gov. Pritzker sent his children to Francis Parker and the Latin School in Chicago. Both currently charge tuition and fees of more than $40,000 a year. But Mr. Pritzker was unwilling to try to save Invest in Kids, clearly telling lower-income parents that failing public schools are good enough for their kids. The average Invest in Kids scholarship cost Illinois about $6,000, whereas Illinois spends about $18,000 per public-school pupil. This means Illinois will be spending more to provide inferior education if parents of more than 33% of the current Invest in Kids scholarship recipients can no longer afford private schools.
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.