School voucher measures are bubbling to the surface in Illinois, so it’s important we remember the history of how these programs came to be.
Recently, the Chicago Board of Education considered a resolution to encourage Gov. JB Pritzker and the Illinois General Assembly to opt Illinois out of the newly created federal tax credit program. In the broader Chicago area, the Cook County Board of Commissioners is taking up a voucher resolution urging lawmakers to opt into that same plan.
When it comes to public education in Illinois, school board members, superintendents, parents and students are all important voices to help build a vision for our public education system. Too often, our most impacted students and families are left out of this conversation. This is not new — since the beginning of America’s education system, Black and Latine students and their families have been excluded from building a vision for their schools.
Now more than ever, we need superintendents, school leaders and all lawmakers to unequivocally denounce school vouchers because they harm public schools by diverting critical public funds away from neighborhood public schools that Black and Latine students rely on. When we don’t listen to those families, history tells us that we will regret that decision.
The phenomenon of school vouchers, subsidies from either the state or federal government that parents are able to use to put their children in private school, began as a pathway to divest from our public schools right after Brown v. Board of Education. Some states weaponized vouchers to resist integration, and this scheme began making waves across the American South in the 1950s and ’60s. Vouchers take public money and funnel it into the private sector for some parents to use on their children’s education. In places such as Prince Edward County, Virginia, that did not want to integrate their schools, their legislators rewrote the rules to ensure white kids could attend private schools through tuition scholarships — all the while leaving Black students in underfunded schools and some students with no school to attend at all.
Today, school voucher programs continue to operate, under the guise of “educational freedom,” “school choice” and “parent empowerment.” President Donald Trump, upon signing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, created the first federal school voucher-style program that provides a tax credit to individuals who donate to scholarship-granting organizations. To date, 27 states have opted into the program; Illinois is not one of them yet, but we are hearing mixed signals from Illinois leaders that suggest that decision is still on the table.
Voucher programs also deepen segregation. Across several different states, voucher programs have shown to contribute to a racial and class divide, pulling white students out of diverse public schools and putting them in elite, more racially homogenous private schools that could deny enrollment to students of color.
Meanwhile, the public schools that serve the majority of Illinois students remain underfunded by Illinois’ own standards. Black and Latine students, in lower-income communities in particular, have waited far too long for school communities that are well resourced and have the same funding as communities with more property wealth across the state. In a district such as Waukegan Community Unit School District 60, which primarily serves Latine students, the schools sit below adequacy levels by $5,000 per student. That’s based on Illinois’ progressive school funding formula known as the evidence-based formula (EBF), analysis from my organization the Partnership for Equity and Education Rights Illinois shows. In Dolton Riverdale School District 148 right outside of Chicago, district adequacy levels are behind by almost $3,000.
Instead of opting into a federal voucher-style program that would slowly draw away students and then funding from our neighborhood public schools, we should be investing in the communities and with the students that need this funding most. This is what we should be focused on addressing with urgent attention and investment, rather than on dubiously intentioned privatization initiatives that don’t genuinely champion our public school system.
Pritzker and state leaders are faced with a choice. They can opt into a federal voucher-style program that doesn’t promise a return on its investment and is a perpetuation of a history of exclusion, or they can listen to the people of this great state and turn away from a policy initiative that is deeply rooted in racism and will hurt our most vulnerable students the most.
The majority of public school parents in Illinois do not want vouchers. They want fully resourced and well-funded public schools where every child — regardless of race, ZIP code or income — is able to succeed and grow. To build a better future for all of Illinois’ children to succeed, we must invest in their lives now, and leaders must make this decision while holding themselves accountable to the communities that will be the most affected.
Our students deserve better.
Erykah Nava, a Chicago Public Schools parent and Chicago native, is the lead parent organizer for the statewide advocacy coalition PEER Illinois.
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