Editorial: A second chance for school choice in Illinois
But some hope has returned to the families who lost their lifeline when Invest in Kids expired.
Tucked into President Donald Trump's budget reconciliation bill is a new school choice program that provides a tax credit to people or corporations that donate up to $1,700 each year to scholarship-granting organizations. Students are eligible for these scholarships if their household income is at or below 300% of the area median income.
If that sounds familiar, it's because the tax credit model is very similar to how Illinois' Invest in Kids program worked.
But there's a catch: Participation is voluntary. Each state gets to decide whether to take part in the program. To participate, officials have to opt in, and if they join, they also choose which scholarship organizations are eligible. They have to choose to participate each year.
So now the ball's back in Gov. JB Pritzker's court once more.
Pritzker is going to have to make a difficult decision. Back in 2023, the governor said he would've signed legislation extending Invest in Kids back. Of course, that legislation never made it to his desk.
This time around, without the General Assembly being involved, he's going to face stiff opposition from the union movement. If he opts into the program, union leadership will view it as a betrayal.
The governor should opt in anyway.
This is a federal program that won't cost the state a dime, and once again it would give options to our state's low-income families who don't have the luxury of affording private tuition even if their kids are struggling in their neighborhood school.
While standardized testing isn't perfect, it is one of the only clear metrics we have to gauge academic performance. What the results show is that just 26% of third- through eight-graders who are low-income are reading at grade level.
But more than test results, student happiness matters. And kids don't thrive in schools where they don't feel safe, seen or challenged.
When a kid is bullied in school or just can't learn in a traditional classroom environment, families can switch schools — if they have the means. But low-income families can't do that.
Even those who oppose school choice — such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is an outspoken critic of this federal initiative — recognize the injustice of a two‑tier education system.
'One thing we should certainly not be doing is creating a two-tier education system in America — private schools for the wealthy and well-connected, and severely underfunded public schools for low-income, disabled and working-class kids,' he said back in June, K-12 Dive reported. 'That is not what this country is supposed to be about.'
The difference is, we believe more choice is one way to narrow that gap rather than widen it.
Illinois' Invest in Kids school choice program was popular, with a majority of voters supporting the concept, according to a 2023 poll from Impact Research.
We supported it, too. Just consider who these privately funded scholarships helped: Kids whose family incomes were below 300% of the federal poverty level were eligible. In the 2022-23 school year, more than one-quarter of scholarship recipients came from families earning less than the federal poverty level — $26,500 for a family of four. Nearly two-thirds had household incomes below 185% of the poverty line, or $49,025 for a family of four. More than half of the low-income students who received scholarships through Empower Illinois — by far the largest distributor of scholarships under Illinois' Invest in Kids program — were Black or Hispanic.
Springfield abandoned thousands of needy students when it dropped Invest in Kids a year and a half ago.
Thankfully, now Illinois has a chance to correct its mistake. All we have to do is opt in.
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