Vouchers were born in segregation. Illinois should keep them out.
On October 1, the U.S. The Treasury Department and the IRS released the rules for the new federal tax-credit voucher program. Every governor now has to decide whether to opt in, and the choice says a lot about who they stand with. Darren Bailey’s campaign has already made clear it would opt Illinois in. Democratic governors across the country have shown there is another way. In Kentucky, Governor Andy Beshear vetoed his legislature’s bill to join the program. In Wisconsin, Governor Toney Evers vetoed it too, saying taxpayer money belongs in public classrooms. That’s why we’re counting on Governor Pritzker to keep Illinois out.
Not every Democrat has held the line. On Friday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul opted in, saying she was “not going to leave money on the table.” Some voices in Springfield are making the same argument here.
I want to be clear with you about what this program is, where the idea comes from, who it leaves behind and what our students actually need.
Vouchers were built to resist integration
Vouchers are not a new idea, and they do not have an innocent history. After Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, segregationist lawmakers across the South searched for ways around the ruling. One of their answers was the tuition grant: public money that let white families leave integrating public schools for private "segregation academies."
In Prince Edward County, Virginia, officials shut down the public schools entirely rather than integrate them. For five years, white students attended a private academy supported by tuition grants, while most Black children in the county had no school at all. It took the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1964, to force those public schools back open.
The vocabulary has changed. Today it's "choice," "freedom" and "scholarships." The design has not. Move public dollars into private institutions that answer to fewer rules, and leave the public schools that serve every child with less.
Vouchers leave all students behind
Race is at the center of this history, and it is still at the center of who gets hurt. When the state shortchanges public schools, the students who feel it first are Black and Brown children in the districts Illinois has underfunded the longest. And students who use these federal vouchers at private schools are not guaranteed the civil rights protections public school students have, including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on race, color and national origin.
But the harm doesn't stop there. Vouchers send public tax dollars to private and religious schools that can:
Turn away LGBTQIA students because of who they are or who they love, or because they have two moms.
Discriminate on the basis of sex, because Title IX protections are not guaranteed either.
Refuse students with disabilities, or enroll them without the IDEA guarantee of a free appropriate public education.
Teach junk science. Darren Bailey founded a private school that used textbooks claiming dinosaurs and humans lived together. Vouchers can send your tax dollars to classrooms like that.
States that opt in are also barred from adding accountability standards or reporting requirements for the organizations handing out the scholarships, so the public may never learn who is served and who is turned away.
Illinois has already said no
Illinois has already tried this. The state ran the Invest in Kids tax-credit scholarship program from 2017 until lawmakers let it expire at the end of 2023. The credits went to students already in private school, and they were more white and well-off than Illinois' student population.
The IFT, in coalition with our allies, ended Illinois' voucher program, a rare win against vouchers anywhere in the country. We don't need vouchers back, especially since we aren't funding pre-K to PhD appropriately now.
What our schools need is full funding through EBF
In 2017, Illinois made a promise to our students. Evidence-Based Funding was designed to send new dollars first to the districts furthest from adequacy, and the state committed to getting every district to at least 90 percent adequacy within ten years. That deadline arrives this fiscal year. Here is where we stand:
The statewide adequacy gap is now $6.8 billion, and it grew by $1.24 billion in a single year.
The state added only $300 million in new EBF funding this year.
About 660 districts serving 1.5 million students will still be below 90 percent adequacy. At this pace, Illinois won't reach its own target until around 2037.
Reimbursement for special education transportation has fallen from 92 percent in FY17 to 55 percent, and special education tuition reimbursement has fallen from 96 percent to 62 percent.
A voucher program does not change a single one of those numbers. It doesn't add a dollar to EBF. It doesn't cover mandated costs. It doesn't hire a teacher, a paraprofessional, a social worker or a bus driver. Meanwhile, Treasury estimates the federal program could cost roughly $26 billion a year in lost revenue by 2030, more than the federal government now spends on Title I or IDEA. In fact, vouchers make Illinois' school funding problem worse, and we all know it.
Follow the money
Vouchers discriminate on the way in. On the way out, the money goes places it should never go.
In Arizona, where vouchers are universal, public education dollars have paid for ski passes, ninja gyms, trampoline parks and luxury car driving lessons. The state has had to chase repayment for purchases that included diamond rings and lingerie. Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs put it plainly: "Arizona taxpayers should not have their hard-earned money wasted on diamond rings and lingerie."
Illinois saw its own version. Over six years, Invest in Kids diverted $315 million from the state's General Revenue Fund, and Empower Illinois, a scholarship organization, kept 5 percent of the voucher dollars it handled for itself.
Governor, stand with us
Opposing vouchers is not a fringe position. It is the position of the Democratic Party. The national Democratic platform says it plainly: "We oppose the use of private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes."
Democratic governors have stood on that principle even when it was hard. In March, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear vetoed his legislature's bill to opt Kentucky into this same federal program. "Public dollars should only be used for public education," he wrote. The Republican supermajority overrode him, but Beshear made them do it without him.
Only two Democratic governors have opted in: Jared Polis in Colorado and, as of Friday, Kathy Hochul in New York. New York's educators will not forget it. As United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew put it, "Gov. Hochul will bear the responsibility, but our students, educators, and families will bear the price."
Governor Pritzker has built a national reputation as a defender of working families and public institutions. Leaders with national ambitions are measured by moments like this one. Illinois should not join the short list of Democratic states opening the door to vouchers.
Call to action
The Governor must refuse to opt in, and he can keep the promise Illinois made to our students in 2017. We are calling on Governor Pritzker to keep Illinois out of this program, and on the Governor and the General Assembly to fully fund EBF.
Here is how you can help:
Share this letter with your colleagues and the families in your school community.
Join us at IFT Lobby Days on November 18 and December 2.
Public education is part of our social contract. Our schools belong to all of us, and our students deserve a state that funds them that way. Not a voucher. Full funding.
