Illinois's voucher law heads off into the sunset.
The Illinois House has adjourned until January 16, 2024 without passing an extension to the state’s voucher law, which starts expiring on January 1, 2024.
In 2017, Republican Governor Bruce Rauner of Illinois had suffered a rough defeat of his budget; he then replaced much of his staff with personnel from the right wing think tank, Illinois Policy Institute. One of the first bills he signed after the shakeup was a tax credit scholarship program; pushed by Rauner, the GOP, and Bishop Blase Cupich of the Archdiocese of Chicago, the Invest In Kids Act allowed citizens and businesses to redirect the taxes they owed the state to instead go to support private schools.
Tax credit scholarships create the illusion that taxpayers are not footing the voucher bill. But the Invest In Kids tax credits created a hole in the budget as large as $75 million; taxpayers can either fill the gap by paying more, or accept cuts in services. Directly or indirectly, taxpayers pay the price for tax credit scholarships.
That’s why Kentucky’s supreme court rejected that states tax credit scholarship program. “The money at issue cannot be characterized as simply private funds,” the court wrote, “rather it represents the tax liability that the taxpayer would otherwise owe.”
Illinois’s program funded a considerable amount of discrimination with taxpayer money. Illinois Families for Public School found
- At least 85 schools in the Invest in Kids program, nearly 1 in 5, have anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
- Only 13% of private schools in the Invest in Kids program last year reported to the Illinois State Board of Education that they served any special education students. The majority of schools in the program are Catholic schools, and four of six Catholic dioceses in Illinois have policies that say schools may refuse to accommodate students with disabilities.
- Policies that discriminate against pregnant and parenting students, students who have had an abortion, English-language learners, students with disabilities, undocumented students, and more are widespread in Illinois voucher schools as well.
More specific examples include Yeshivas Tiferes Tzvi Academy of Chicago, which reserves the right to expel any student whose family listens to secular music. Rockford Christian Schools will not enroll a “parent with a child at home.” Westlake Christian Academy of Greyslake will not admit students if they or their custodial parents maintain a “lifestyle” that violates biblical principles; this would include “promiscuity, homosexual behavior, or other violations of the unique God-give roles of male and female.” In fact, Westlake only accepts students from families in which one parent is “a born-again Christian.”
Though Illinois Policy Institute blames the defeat on the teachers’ unions, a coalition of 65 local, state and national organizations came together to argue in favor of letting the voucher program sunset away. Supporters of the law have vowed to continue the fight for the voucher program. But that fight will now have to wait for the new year, when the voucher law will already be on its way out. In the meantime, Illinois is now the first state to step away from an existing voucher program.
