By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
Study the graphic below and there are two takeaways. First, there’s a massive green wave of school choice overtaking the country, with more than 30 states now offering some form of a tax credit scholarship, voucher or education savings account (ESAs) for use in any type of school. Call it educational freedom.
In the second, you should note a group of union-dominated states – including California, New York, Oregon, Colorado and Illinois – that’s opposed to any form of choice. Illinois in particular stands out because its lawmakers killed off its Invest in Kids program in 2023, ending school choice in the state in one fell swoop.
Now the feds may deliver school choice to those anti-choice states anyway. Invest in Education reports that Congressional Republicans just inserted a $5 billion federal tax credit scholarship program called the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) into their proposed budget omnibus. As many as one million children across the 50 states could have access to scholarship funds if the federal budget passes as is.
Families would be able to spend the money on a large range of education-related expenses, including private and parochial school tuition, books and instructional materials, online classes, private tutoring and educational therapy.
Here are more details provided by the American Federation for Children:
- Of the $5 billion total, each state is guaranteed access to up to $20 million in tax credits if SGOs can raise the funds. Thereafter, it is first-come, first-serve. Students in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. can benefit.
- Students in grades K-12 in every state and every school setting are eligible. The income threshold is set at 300 percent of median gross income by region as determined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. This would cover 85% – 90% of K-12 students in every state.
- Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs) determine the individual amount of scholarship awards and uses which include tuition, tutoring, education technology, on-line courses, curriculum, fees, homeschool expenses, or special needs services.
An 80-20 issue
A new IIEC poll finds that 8 in 10 voters want to “empower parents and prioritize individual students’ needs by providing greater access and more choices to ensure children receive the best education.” More than 7 in 10 approve of school choice specifically, agreeing that parents should be “allowed to choose the public, private or technical trade school they send their children to.”
School choice is an 80-20 issue even in Illinois. 76% of parents of school age children support providing students with Education Savings Accounts in K–12 education, according to EdChoice.
The passage of ECCA could provide as many as 50,000 Illinois kids access to better schools. That’s far more than the school choice program Illinois’ Democratic supermajorities, with support of the teachers unions, helped kill nearly two years ago.
But the reality is even 50,000 is far from enough. Illinois has 1.1 million students who can’t read at grade level. That’s nearly 60% of all Illinois public school students.
What Illinois parents really need is a state-run universal school choice program, one that provides a generous Educational Savings Account to every single student who needs one.
That will only happen when Illinois parents rise up and demand the same educational freedoms that families in neighboring Iowa and Indiana enjoy.
The ECCA could help make that happen.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Illinois increasingly surrounded by school choice states. Gov. Abbott signs universal school choice into Texas law
- 2024 data: Not a single child tested proficient in math in 80 Illinois schools. For reading, it was 24 schools.
- Shutter, roll back, freeze. Three things Chicago Public Schools needs to do.
- Homeschooling and the hypocrisy of Illinois politicians
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Education should be a voluntary exchange between parents and educators. Both parties should gain from the exchange. Instead, parents have mediocre education foisted on their children in unaccountable public schools.
School choice would force politicians to find a new source for their campaign funds besides teacher’s unions.
What is an SGO?
Scholarship granting organizations
Yeah, the article should have clarified. It’s a very specific abbr
Yes, Scholarship Granting Organizations like Empower Illinois or Imagine.
CTU needs to being a political entity and forced to focus on student education. CTU should not be allowed to donate to political campaigns or PAC organizations, or to lobby for money for themselves. CTU needs to focus on student outcomes and quality teaching. Right now they’re focused on a failed education system that benefits only them. CTU doesn’t even care if they bankrupt CPS or Chicago.
CTU needs to be destroyed and crushed into the barnyard soil, all current CTU members barred from ever teaching again and private enterprise take over Chicago education.
You can thank the CTU and their bought and paid for Democrat politicians/bitches for killing it because the Catholic schools embarrassed CPS during Covid.
Another example of the Pritzger crew wasting taxpayers money on edicts that the Feds shut down posthaste. Nice work, fellas!
God Forbid that there would be accountability in public education.