By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
Sources have informed Wirepoints that the school scholarship program for Illinois students is dead. Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson and others in the state legislature are going to kill the program for low-income, working-class families when it comes up for renewal this legislative session.
The program – the Invest in Kids Act – currently gives 9,000 kids hope for a better education and a better life through what are called tax-credit scholarships. Those kids have left the traditional public system for schools that better suit their needs.
But Gov. Pritzker and others have a plan to eliminate the program, educational options for families be damned. If there isn’t extreme pushback, say goodbye to the Invest in Kids Act.
It’s so wrong. Illinois politicians are wiping out options for students just when states around the country are rapidly expanding their programs by making them universal – meaning for all students.
Iowa recently passed one of the nation’s broadest Education Savings Account programs. Indiana legislators are preparing to pass a “virtually universal” voucher program in their latest budget. Arizona made headlines last year when it implemented universal education savings accounts. And Florida made its own education savings account program apply to all students earlier this year.
More than half the nation now has some form of school choice. In contrast, Illinois would be the first state in the country to entirely eliminate an existing school choice program.
That’s despite massive support for educational choice among Illinoisans. Nearly 80 percent of Illinois parents and 67 percent of all Illinois adults support Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs, a recent EdChoice survey found.
Unfortunately, the state’s politicians have other ideas.
To ensure the program doesn’t get renewed, we’re told Pritzker and Johnson want to move the reauthorization of the program out of the state’s budget negotiation process – where it has a higher likelihood of passing – and to the veto session later this year.
The scholarship language will then end up as stand-alone legislation – a single bill that the teachers unions can focus all their efforts on killing.
With such pressure bearing down on them, there’s little chance a majority of legislators will vote to keep the Invest in Kids Act alive.
Illinois’ only school choice program
The Invest in Kids Act has served as the state’s sole form of school choice since 2017.
Illinoisans who support the program donate cash for scholarships and in exchange get a 75 percent tax credit from the state. For example, instead of a donor paying $7,500 to the Illinois Department of Revenue he owes in taxes, the donor gives $10,000 to the scholarship program and gets a $7,500 tax credit.
The statewide program is dedicated entirely to kids in need: the average household income of the scholarship recipients is $45,000. The scholarships, on average about $6,600 per student, are handed out based largely on the existing student demographics of the state: 40 percent for whites, 34 percent for Hispanics and 19 percent for blacks.
Today, the program has a wait list of more than 31,000 kids.
Many families want options outside the traditional public school system. That’s particularly true in Chicago. As we’ve previously reported, many CPS schools are practically empty, failing or both, and yet they’re kept open. One third of CPS’ traditional schools are less than half occupied. (See appendix for more details.)
Like Manley High School: It has capacity for 1,300 students and yet enrollment is a desolate 70 kids. Less than 3 percent of those kids are proficient in reading, according to the state’s report card.
Then there are the 33 CPS schools that have zero kids who test proficient in math, and 22 which have zero kids proficient in reading. (See appendix for more details.)
Overall, CPS is failing its black and Hispanic kids. Just 11 of every 100 black CPS students could read at grade level in 2022. In math, just 6 in 100 were proficient in math. The results for Hispanic students were only slightly better.
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Behind every scholarship is the story of struggle and hope, of children who had difficulty learning or fitting in until a scholarship helped them find a school that fit their needs.
All their hopes are about to be dashed by politicians that prefer to protect the current system instead of ensuring that Illinois’ children get the education that best suits their needs.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Chicago Public Schools wants help with massive deficits despite billions in federal aid, plummeting enrollment
- Wirepoints expands its Report Cards to all 850 Illinois school districts.
- Why can only 6 of every 100 Chicago black students do math at grade level? Chicago Mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson offers some clues.
- Not a single student can do math at grade level in 53 Illinois schools. For reading, it’s 30 schools
Appendix
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Sigh. This is terrible, true news. But so was the Fall of the Roman Western Empire in 5th Century AD – over run by illiterate, soap avoiding Barbarians (Germanic Goths, Vandals – hence the term “Vandalism” and the Asiatic Hun hordes under Atilla the Hun. The Western Roman Empire, Western Civilization collapsed in the 5th Century AD and the Greek Eastern Empire finally went down and out when the Ottoman Islamic Turks sacked, destroyed, Constantinople in 1453. What followed was the Dark Ages in Western European and slavery to the Ottoman and other Islamists (girls taken as concubine sexual slaves… Read more »
My opinion is, as everything they do, they’re making blue states & cities as inhabitable as possible to push people towards red states. Bringing their ignorant ideals with them to break up red strongeholds. These ppl don’t learn from bad choices. They honestly think poor implementation of their sick ideas is the problem, not the ideas themselves. It’s NOT a good thing liberals are moving.
The teachers unions have spent a LOT of time and $$$ getting full control over the Leftist Democrats in IL who have a supermajority. IIKA is dead. Plan accordingly if you were receiving a scholarship. Most Catholic clerics and prelates will go along with the Democrats plans.
Here’s an article on Fauci and Weingarten
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fauci-weingarten-try-rewrite-history-105046371.html
Teachers Unions are already rallying their efforts to have their members contact their state senators and representatives to let the “Invest in Kids” bill sunset.
Suzy Glowiak Hilton has already come out against Invest in Kids. (We need more tax revenue.) Please email or call your representatives to let them know how you feel.
This is crucial, sometimes vital for families who don’t make a lot of money but want to send their kids to Catholic/private school because their faith is as important as education! Please don’t delay this as families are needing to know NOW in order to make decisions for their children’s next school year!
The last thing that the parasites of CTU and IFT want is competition. It exposes their incompetence, sloth and evil. Bust these unions. Fire these grifters and take away their teaching certificates.
What a horrible idea!!! The students this program is meant to help will now have no educational options. Just another example of how the “governor” is against lower income citizens & only wants to help his wealthy constituents. He’s terrible!
That means it’s working
Pritzker wants to lick the feet of the vermin scum teachers unions. Everyone else can suffer.
May they all rot in hell
The Illinois contribution to give these kids an average $6,600 scholarship to a better education at a private school is $4,950 (75%). The Chicago Public Schools spends over $20,000 per student for disappointing results. Expand the program and the state saves money.
Nah. The main problem with failing Chicago and other urban public schools is bad students and bad parents. Just move these bad students, bad parents to private, parochial, suburban or state public schools in Montana or Utah – the results will be the same. There is no magic free market, school choice solution, there is no “magic dirt” in Dupage County or Malmo Sweden. Have you been following crime news from Malmo Sweden lately? Malmo now has very violent drug gang wars, Islamic no go zones same as London/Londonstan England and Sweden has the highest rape rates of any place… Read more »
Magic Dirt is part of it. But things are far worse today than they were pre-pandemic, or even 10 years ago. There’s substantial room for improvement but every institution in Chicago needs to kick its butt into high gear to get that done. But it ain’t never gonna happen.
There’s nothing so bad the government can’t make it worse. Conversely there’s nothing that private schools can’t improve upon by removing kids from public schools and teacher’s unions..
Chicago voted for socialism. The city is getting socialism. What’s the problem?
If you live in Chicago and don’t want socialism, it’s your choice to stay or leave. That’s how it works. Personally, I recommend leaving. Chicagoans that stay can deal with the excrement they produce.
Chicago is getting communism called socialism.
What amazes me is how so many in Chicago and IL want this failure. But this is another consequence of what happens in a downward spiral.
Illinois hasn’t hit bottom yet. Throwing more money at the problem isn’t going to fix things.
Florida just ranked as the top state for education, amid DeSantis battles on curriculum, books, and college leadership (msn.com)
Elected officials and bureaucrats must be subject to the laws/rules they enact.
While something like 14 states are opening up to school choice, IL goes the opposite way. Take your greatly under achieving reading and math scores and suck it up in your crummy public schools-no choice for you except private schools now with only your own money. Everything IL does encourages smart people to leave.
So instead of the state spending an average of $6,600 to educate a child you force some of these kids back to CPS and you pay $28,000 per child which supports CTU. Sounds like high level progressive economics to me.
Never, never doubt that these are EVIL men you’re dealing with. There is no better indication to me that Democrats and so-called Progressives want minority (and let’s face it, it is primarily minorities we’re talking about) children to remain on the plantation. The ticket out of slavery was always education. They know this. They fear this. A well-educated, thoughtful electorate would show Pritzker and Johnson the door. They’ll burn in hell for what they’re doing.
Spot on SF. How dare those kids actually have a choice and the CPS have some competition….
Get out, if you can!!!!!
When I thought Illinois had enough reasons for citizens to exit the state, the politicians create yet another. Beside bending a knee to the teachers unions, what other possible reason would there be to do this? I recently spoke with a woman who spent plenty of money on tutoring her son to prepare him for one of Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools. She immersed herself in the selection process to ensure he would be well positioned to be selected. Success! He will be an incoming freshman this fall. We talked about the miserable math and science results among so many… Read more »
Agreed, particularly so when over two thirds of Chicago’s registered voters simply sat at home on their thumbs and let 15% of those eligible to vote elect their CTU-beholden mayor.
“but I think there were a lot of north side voters with similar sympathies”
Yes they are the hysterical Karens that screamed for mask mandates, fake vaccines, firing those who wouldn’t comply with unconstitutional dictates. They are the Karens that think your child should change their sex. They are the Karens that think all cis white males are evil and they must atone for every past transgression as a giant virtue signal. They are evil, angry, jealous attention seeking purple haired non player characters who just want everyone else to suffer as they do.
Yup, that just about nails it.
Shameful. Absolutely shameful, and oh so ‘progressive.’
These people are ideologues. Outcomes do not matter one iota.
Meanwhile, (per chalkbeat) hypocrite CTU/Brandon doesn’t use the neighborhood schools but has his kids in selective enrolment-magnate cps schools. I’m sure comrades gates & sharkey do the same.
Comrade sharky sent his evil spawn to private
1% of the state’s K-12 budget. A rounding error. The people who fought this program for the last five years are vindictive, horrible trolls.
you could have just said “public sector union parasites” too, they’re synonymous