It’s incredible that Illinois politicians and the teachers unions are focused on maiming – or even killing – the state’s tiny 9,700-student school choice program when states across the country are not only expanding school choice, but making it universally available for every single student in their state.
What’s even more cruel, they want to kill the program – the Invest in Kids Act – even though a whopping 1.2 million Illinois public school students can’t read at grade level and 1.4 million aren’t proficient in math.
Hundreds of thousands of kids are trapped in failing schools across the state. Those children need more choices, not less. School choice should be a litmus test for every politician in upcoming elections.
Illinois’ legislature meets for just three more days this year and the Invest in Kids Act will be the most important issue they contemplate. The $75 million tax-credit scholarship program expires this year and if it’s not extended by lawmakers, it dies.
If that happens, Illinois will be the first state in the country to wipe out an entire existing school choice program.
Hundreds of thousands unable to read
Illinois’ recent 2023 Report Card shows that 65% of the state’s 1.86 million public school children can’t read at grade level. That’s 1.2 million students. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find a large share of those kids are more than a year behind. Many are basically illiterate.
School districts in cities like Decatur, Peoria, Elgin, Waukegan, Rockford and Chicago, are no longer institutions of learning. Look at the numbers in the graphic below and it becomes obvious that parents in these districts urgently need an alternative to their public schools.
More than 25,000 students can’t read at grade level in Elgin’s public schools. It’s a similar number in Rockford. And in Springfield, Peoria and Waukegan, it’s more than 10,000 each.
In Chicago, there’s almost 240,000 kids not at grade level.
Many of those students are black and Hispanic, but it’s not just minorities who are failed by the system. As we showed in the first graphic, more than 470,000 white children statewide can’t read at grade level. That’s fifty-five percent of the state’s 853,000 white public school students.
Surprisingly, many of those students are in the north and west suburbs of Chicago, where some of Illinois’ “best” schools are located. Take Arlington Heights SD 25, Palatine CCSD 15 or Maine Township HSD 207. In those districts, about half of white students aren’t proficient in reading.
And it gets even worse at some school districts downstate. Shockingly, 88 percent of Decatur’s 2,400 white students can’t read at grade level. The district has almost eliminated the white/black reading gap, but obviously in the wrong way.
The politics
The plot to kill the Invest in Kids Act is playing out as we said it would back in May. Then as now, Republicans want to preserve the program as is and Democratic leadership does not. That’s why the program’s reauthorization wasn’t included in the 2024 budget as it should have been.
We predicted the bill would be shoved into the veto session as a stand alone item, where the program would be either maimed by “compromise” or not even come up for a vote, meaning it dies.
That’s precisely what’s happening. The latest “compromise” bill cuts the program size and reduces the incentive for donors to give.* Such changes would inevitably result in the slow death of the program and the bill should be rejected outright.
Nevertheless, such a bill could still pass to give the appearance that school choice has been preserved.
That would suit Gov. Pritzker nicely. As the fate of the Invest in Kids Act has gotten more attention, Pritzker has finally said he’ll sign any proposal that makes it to his desk. It’s his way of placating some of his pro-school-choice constituencies on the left.
But make no mistake, Gov. Pritzker is no supporter. If he was, he’d be pouring political pressure and millions of dollars behind it – like he does with the issues he actually cares about. Like the $50 million-plus he spent to push a progressive tax in Illinois. Or the money he donated to Illinois Supreme Court candidates to protect the court’s Democratic majority. Or the likely tens of millions he’ll spend on his newest initiative, Think Big, a nationwide abortion-rights platform to support ballot initiatives.
That said, the “compromise” bill may not even come up for a vote. The teachers unions want the Invest in Kids Act dead – and are pressuring lawmakers to not even support the compromise. No vote at all means the program sunsets.
That suits Gov. Pritzker even better. He can claim he was for the program but was never given the chance to extend it.
The reality is that the current Invest in Kids Act, while necessary, falls way short of what the 1.2 million-plus children in Illinois who can’t read or do math at grade level need.
They and their parents should expect so much more from lawmakers. Especially when you look at what’s happening nationally. Since we wrote our original commentary in May:
- Oklahoma passed a universal school choice program offering a tax credit up to $7,500 per child.
- Ohio made their voucher program universal, offering up to $8,400 per child.
- And every student in North Carolina is now eligible for an education savings account worth up to $7,500.
Those states are showing the way forward. But Illinois is stuck fighting over a tiny program when hundreds of thousands of kids deserve the option of something far better, especially given what’s happening nationally.
*The latest proposal cuts the program’s maximum size to $50 million from $75 million and cuts the annual limit for tax credits to $500,000 from $1 million. It also modifies the tax credit percentage, creating an overall disincentive to donate.