School choice in Illinois is dead. For now. The teachers unions were on a warpath to kill Illinois’ small tax-credit scholarship program and their Democratic allies weren’t willing to cross them. Gov. J.B. Pritzker, House Speaker Chris Welch and Senate President Don Harmon failed to call a bill to a vote this week to extend the program and with that, the Invest in Kids Act sunsets at the end of this year.
Gone are the scholarships for nearly 10,000 low-income students, largely minority kids. And, so too, is the hope for tens of thousands more kids to be able to escape the failure of Illinois’ public school system.
That there should be school choice in Illinois is beyond argument. Just look below at what the teachers unions and Illinois’ educational system is delivering today, after spending nearly $24,000 per student. The results are beyond dismal.
In Decatur, 7,300 of the school district’s 7,900 enrollment can’t read at grade level. That’s 92% of all kids – data straight from the state report card.
In Peoria, 10,700 of the school district’s 12,600 can’t read at grade level. That’s 85% of all kids there.
It’s pretty much the same in Rockford and Elgin and Waukegan and many areas of the state.
And at Chicago Public Schools, 239,000 of the district’s 320,00 enrollment can’t read at grade level. That’s 75% of all kids.
In all, 1.2 million of the state’s 1.85 million public school students can’t read at grade level. 1.4 million can’t do math at grade level.
It’s an indictment of the school system and all the political and education elite who’ve run it for decades.
Those results alone, on top of the other education failures we’ve highlighted at Wirepoints, are proof enough that Illinois needs universal school choice, where every single student in the state, no matter race, income or special needs, gets access to a voucher or an education savings account.
Universal choice is already spreading across the country.
But it won’t happen here as long as the unions rabidly oppose school choice, as the Chicago Teachers Union did in its press release yesterday. Read it for yourself here. The union is celebrating the fact that Illinois becomes the first state in the country to entirely kill off its school choice program. They are gloating at keeping kids trapped in failing schools.
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Yes, the unions and Illinois’ leadership under Gov. Pritzker have succeeded in killing the Invest in Kids Act. But hopefully, the seed – and the hope – for school choice is still alive.
Count on the movement to mount a comeback. The question is what should that comeback looks like. We’ll share our thoughts on that soon.