Thousands of families finally found a school that worked for their kids. In Illinois, nearly 10,000 low-income, mostly black and Hispanic children, along with over 1,000 underprivileged Jewish children, among others, are dependent on the state’s tax-credit scholarship school-choice program, Invest in Kids, to attend a well-performing school. Governor J. B. Pritzker said he would defend the program. Instead, this month, the legislature voted to kill it, and Pritzker did nothing to stop it. Now, most of these families will have no choice but to send their kids to their mostly low-performing assigned schools.
In Chicago, test scores are abysmal. A mere 20 percent of students are reading at a grade level, and just 15 percent are proficient in math. Among eighth graders, black and Hispanic students had test scores averaging 16 and 30 points lower than white students’. And the education crisis being faced in America’s urban cores is not limited to Chicago. Last year, in 23 Baltimore public schools, not one student was proficient in math. In the same year, in Providence, less than 12 and 14 percent of public-school students were proficient in math and reading. One of America’s greatest founding promises is that of equal opportunity, and today, our education system is making the climb to prosperity too difficult for far too many Americans.
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