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The CTU and its allies' efforts to block Illinois participation in the new federal scholarship program is their latest effort to deny Chicago’s children a quality education
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and its allies, determined to preserve and expand their monopoly over public education, are denying Illinois families meaningful educational alternatives — even at the cost of forfeiting up to $1 billion in potential federal support to improve student outcomes. That estimate represents the funding Illinois families could access if the state participated in and actively promoted the proposed federal “School Scholarship Initiative,” part of a broader education reform effort informally dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill.”
Missed opportunity to support families
Under this federal proposal, individual taxpayers could receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 per donor for contributions to qualified Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs). These SGOs would then provide direct financial assistance to both public and private school families for a range of educational needs — all at no cost to the state or local school districts. Eligible expenses could include tuition aid for low- and middle-income families, tutoring and academic support, therapies for children with disabilities, vocational programs, transportation, uniforms, and even child care services for working parents.
Although governors would not directly control SGOs, they could help guide implementation by promoting transparency and ensuring funds reach the students most in need. The federal initiative, if enacted, could also help replace critical supports that expired with pandemic-era relief funding under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
We are in an education depression
The latest “Nation’s Report Card” (NAEP) should serve as a national wake-up call. Student achievement is falling across the board: Fourth-graders struggle with reading, eighth-graders show declining science scores, and high school seniors are performing at generational lows in both reading and math. The cracks in U.S. public education are widening — and they’re not new.
This downturn predates the pandemic. For over a decade, American student performance on national assessments has stagnated or declined, especially among those furthest from opportunity. Education analyst Tim Daly calls this an “education depression” — a long-term structural failure to prepare young people for the modern economy.
Illinois mirrors this decline. Only about one-third of students meet proficiency in reading or math on the NAEP exam, with Chicago students performing even worse. This dismal record persists despite Illinois spending over $22,000 per pupil annually, and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) spending nearly $32,000. Rather than improving standards, state officials have responded by lowering test cut scores, claiming standards were “too high.” Meanwhile, CTU leaders dismiss standardized testing as “junk science rooted in white supremacy.”
The refusal to participate in the federal scholarship initiative is difficult to justify and impossible to defend morally. It squanders a substantive opportunity to help families access meaningful educational support. Former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently warned that Democrats’ once-dominant advantage on education “has evaporated,” noting most states showing the strongest gains are now Republican-led.
Illinois’ failure to opt in: Another concession to the unions
Governor J.B. Pritzker and state legislators succumbed to union pressure in 2023 by allowing Illinois’ own “Invest in Kids” tax credit scholarship program to expire. That decision stripped nearly 10,000 low-income families — many in Chicago — of scholarships that gave their children access to better schools. The program had cost the state less than 0.5 percent of its annual K–12 budget, but provided a lifeline to struggling families shut out of quality public options.
Research from the Illinois State Board of Education in 2024 showed that “Invest in Kids” scholarship students made the largest year-over-year learning gains statewide. Most came from households earning under $49,000 annually and outperformed their low-income peers in public schools in reading and math. While slight differences in how “low-income” is defined make perfect comparisons difficult, the trend is unmistakable.
Catholic schools, in particular, continue to outperform public schools on nearly every measure. If Catholic schools were treated as a single state on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), they would rank as the highest-performing in the nation. Federal data from the U.S. Department of Education also shows Black, Latino, and low-income students achieve stronger outcomes in Catholic settings than in both traditional public and charter schools.
The union assault on school choice
In rejecting the federal school scholarship initiative, CTU is continuing its long campaign against educational choice — including public school options that empower parents and communities. The union has spent years attacking Chicago’s public charter schools, whose teachers are not required to join CTU and whose schools operate with greater flexibility. That flexibility allows innovation beyond rigid collective bargaining rules that restrict accountability, limit instructional hours, and constrain staffing.
Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) has repeatedly found that charter students — especially Black and Latino pupils — achieve greater academic gains in reading and math than their peers in district schools (CREDO, 2023). Economist Thomas Sowell drew similar conclusions in his 2020 book “Charter Schools and Their Enemies,” documenting charter school success stories in New York City.
In Chicago, roughly 54,000 students — 98 percent of them Black or Latino — attend public charter schools, comprising nearly a quarter of all public high school students. Yet the CTU has successfully pressured CPS and state leaders to impose restrictions that stifle this sector: Capping charter growth, denying equal funding, excluding them from facility support, and imposing short renewal terms of two to three years that destabilize planning and investment.
The CTU-backed “Union Neutrality Law” further pressures charters to accept unionization. The Acero Charter Schools network demonstrates the damage this can cause. After CTU organized Acero staff and led the first charter teacher strike in Chicago, costs increased and flexibility declined. CPS then shortened Acero’s renewal term, enrollment dropped, and CTU later lobbied for several Acero campuses to be absorbed into under-enrolled, lower-performing district schools.
Now, CTU is targeting Chicago’s selective enrollment schools — the city’s highest-performing public schools. The union claims these schools are “tools of inequality,” even though they spend less per student than the district average and serve populations that are over 70 percent Black and Latino, more than half of whom come from low-income families. The union’s real goal is clear: Eliminate visible contrasts between successful selective schools and struggling neighborhood schools.
Instead of fixing underperforming schools, where principals and Local School Councils have little ability to make staffing or academic changes, CTU seeks to drag high-performing models down to their level. The irony is striking: Over 30 percent of CTU members send their own children to private schools, and an equal share enroll their children in public magnet or charter schools.
A moral choice
By eliminating charters, capping their enrollment, and undermining selective-enrollment schools, CTU is engaging in educational redlining — trapping the city’s poorest families in the weakest schools with no way out. It is segregation in modern form, not by law but by policy. As Thomas Sowell warned, “The most dangerous form of racism is not the kind that comes with a hood or a noose… It is the kind that comes with an eraser — erasing opportunities.”
If Illinois refuses to participate in the federal “School Scholarship Initiative,” it will mark yet another surrender to special interests at families’ expense. Every year of inaction compounds the harm. This program alone will not fix our education system, but it could deliver immediate and meaningful relief to the children and families who need it most.
As Arne Duncan said: “Sitting on the sidelines is not a policy choice — it’s a moral failure.”
