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Fred Klonsky: What You Need to Know about the Illinois Voucher Program that Was Cancelled by the Legislature

By dianeravitch
November 10, 2023 //
17

For the first time ever, a state voucher program was canceled. The Illinois Legislature failed to renew “Invest in Kids,” which puts an end to vouchers in that state. Retired teacher Fred Klonsky explains in this post why Illinois had a voucher program and who was behind it.

He wrote on his blog:

The veto session of the Illinois General Assembly ended yesterday and in spite of a full court press by the state’s Republicans, the right-wing Illinois Policy Institute and the Catholic Church, the state’s million dollar tax credit voucher program was allowed to die.

Good riddance.

The original idea emerged during the administration of Illinois’ last Republican governor, Bruce Rauner.

The law allowed up to $75 million in tax revenue to be diverted to private schools each year. More than 250 million oof state dollars have now been siphoned off to private schools in our state.

Invest in Kids was only supposed to last five years. It was extended an extra year and voucher supporters wanted to extend it again and make it permanent.

Democratic governor JP Pritzker said that if the General Assembly passed an extension he would sign it.

Instead, the General Assembly adjourned taking no action and so it is done.

In 2017, when Invest in Kids was being considered, the schools in the Archdiocese of Chicago was losing money as Catholic school enrollment was declining.

What to do?

Cupich met with Chicago’s mayor Rahm Emanuel and Illinois governor Bruce Rauner and asked for a life-line.

Of course, the U.S. Constitution’s separation clause prohibits direct government support for religious schools.

But Cardinal Cupich, Bruce Rauner and with behind the scenes support by then-mayor Rahm Emanuel, created the idea of Invest in Kids tax credit as a workaround to the Constitutional prohibition.

Forbes:

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. 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.”

Defeating the attempt to extend Invest in Kids represents a major defeat for vouchers and school privatization.

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A letter to the blog by reader Martin Gartzman described the small number of unfunded activists who fought against the renewal of the Illinois voucher program. The Illinois Families for Public Schools never lost hope. A true David beats Goliath story.

Illinois Families for Public Schools is a small group. It basically is 3-5 people at any given time, spearheaded by political activist Cassie Cresswell and retired educator Diane Horowitz. They have very little funding. They have no full-time employees and perhaps a couple of part-timers. Cassie is not an educator; she got involved in this work as a parent-activist. But there is zero doubt that without their advocacy and incredible organizing, we’d still have a school voucher program in Illinois. This little group was the engine behind the effort to end Invest in Kids. They got over 60 organizations to support the sunset of the voucher program! They provided the mechanism for other education and political activists to get involved. And they organized the two main teachers unions to make the Invest in Kids sunset a priority (while supplying the unions with much of the data and other “ammunition”).

This isn’t the first time they made the improbable happen. About two years ago, an amazingly ill-conceived proposal for the State testing system was sailing through the Illinois State Board of Education. It was the pet project of the then State Superintendent of Schools and was being pushed hard by a major testing company that was likely to get the ten-year contract to develop and administer the test. The skids were greased for its passage until Illinois Families for Public Schools got involved. The “sure thing” boondoggle turned out to be derailed by relentless opposition that was organized by Illinois Families for Public Schools. Again, there is zero doubt that without those efforts, Illinois K-12 students would be languishing today under a disastrous state assessment system.

We owe a great debt of gratitude to this small group of activists.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Illinois, Resistance, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Illinois: Legislature Lets Voucher Program Die!

By dianeravitch
November 10, 2023 //
2

Public school advocates across Illinois were thrilled yesterday when the state Legislature adjourned without renewing the Illinois voucher program, called the Invest in Kids Act. No state has ever eliminated a voucher program; once enacted, they grow a constituency and a lobby. But in Illinois, the program was not large enough to build a political force to keep it going.

To learn more about the voucher program that will sunset, thanks to the legislature, read this article by Cassie Cresswell, executive director of Illinois Families for Public Schools, and by Diane Horowitz, a board member of ILPS and a retired educator.

Congratulations to Illinois Families for Public Schools and every parent and teacher group who notched a win for the common good.

Today, the Illinois House adjourned until January 16, 2024 without passing an extension to the Invest in Kids Act. The provisions of the Act begin expiring on January 1, 2024.

Statement from Illinois Families for Public Schools:

This is a huge win for public schools in Illinois. It is also a win for the principle of the separation of church and state and for ensuring public dollars are not used to violate civil rights and are spent with the oversight, transparency and accountability that public spending should require. Public funds must be for public schools that serve all kids.

This is also a historic win for the fight against the privatization of public schools in our country more broadly. We are the first state in the US to roll back an existing voucher scheme.

It was a mistake for the Illinois General Assembly to pass the Invest in Kids Act in 2017. We are thankful that they listened to a coalition of over 65 local, state and national organizations and let this voucher program sunset as planned. We hope it is paired with a renewed commitment by ILGA to fully resource a system of high-quality public schools for every child and community in our state, a commitment that is in our state constitution but one that we have not yet fulfilled.

Image of statement text in black on white background with IL-FPS logo

We’ll share more in the coming days. An as ever, thank YOU for your advocacy! 

The collective action of public school supporters all across our state and beyond made this incredible win for the public good happen!

— Team IL-FPS Illinois Families for Public Schools


332 S Michigan Ave Ste 121-i252
Chicago IL 60604
info@ilfps.org, 773-916-7794

Categories Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Illinois, Parents, Privatization, Religion

Illinois: Gov. Pritzker’s Scary Trick, No Treat

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2023 //
7

Julie Vassilatos, public school parent, is shocked that Governor J.B. Pritzker has reversed course on his campaign pledge to let the state’s voucher program die. Vouchers are a zombie policy. They were sold over the past 30 years as a surefire way to “save poor kids from failing schools,” but poor kids do worse in voucher schools, and the primary beneficiaries are kids who never attended public schools, families who get a break on their private school tuition. Vouchers have failed. They are nothing more than a trick to fund families whose children attend private and religious schools.

She writes:

Just in time for Halloween, Illinois Gov. Pritzker says he’ll sign whatever “Invest in Kids” legislation crosses his desk. 

Hearing this news gave me a crickly, creepy feeling up the back of my neck. I honestly thought legislators had decided to allow this thing to die its timely death, reach its expected and planned demise. The legislation was originally supposed to sunset in 2023. But it sounds like it’s creeping back from wherever bad policy goes to die. Crawling back from the mostly dead, only to be reanimated, dressed up in a new school uniform, all its awful secrets covered up.

Secrets like: unaccounted-for dollars. Opaque student outcomes. More than $250M in taxes unpaid by the wealthiest Illinoisans. Private schools, with private school rules, getting public money. Discrimination against disabled students, non-religious students, LGBTQ students and families. Expansion of wealth gaps and inequity. Disinvestment of public schools. 

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And worst of all? Tax-credit scholarship programs have demonstrated not just bad, but downright terrifying longterm results. 

Catastrophically bad results. I’m not being hysterical about this, either—these are results drawn from long term research by universities all over the country. Anyone concerned with education outcomes for children—for our most vulnerable children—should care about this data. Because offering children “choice” through vouchers does not help them. It looks like this:

— In Arizona, its recently implemented universal Empowerment Scholarship Accounts divert, on average, $300,000 away from every neighborhood school. The program—granting a $7300 scholarship per child to use for homeschooling or private school—is approaching $1B in cost, funds things like European trips, Disney+, and trampolines,supports “fly-by-night” unaccredited, unlicensed pop-up schools, and may bankrupt the state. Like Illinois’ program, accountability is thin and there is little transparency about the use of tax dollars or the actual results for children. 

— In Milwaukee, one of the longest running voucher programs in the country has failed to yield positive outcomes. “Among black eighth-graders in 13 urban school districts, Milwaukee—where black students make up more than 70 percent of all voucher recipients—ranked last in reading and second-to-last in math.” In 25 years we should be seeing something better than this—especially given the cost of these programs, both in tax dollars and in the financial hit taken by public schools. In 25 years, more importantly, the vulnerable children subjected to these programs should be flourishing, not failing. 

— In Florida, tuition tax credit program students made no gains in reading or math; in Louisiana, a University of Arkansas study found “large negative impacts after 4 years” for participants in the program. 

— Indiana University researchers have found that the larger voucher or tax credit scholarship programs become, the worse the results they generate. Large programs generate negative results that are shockingly bad, equaling or exceeding the impacts of natural disasters and the pandemic. 

Ignoring the damning data, proponents of tax credit scholarships depend on emotional rhetoric to support their cause—who could possibly be against “saving our scholarships”? They also depend on your tax dollars. Up to 5% of donations to the scholarship funds are used for lobbying and marketing purposes. So when you read about busloads and busloads of people wearing matching t-shirts arriving in Springfield, and fancy lobbyists flooding the zone, know that that’s your tax dollars at work. 

Those folks will tell you that “the teacher’s union” is against this good wonderful policy and everyone else supports it. They don’t tell you that 65 organizations are united against this legislation, including Access Living, Illinois PTA, the Network for Public Education, the League of Women Voters, and the American Association of University Women Illinois. 

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People. We have gone over this. This is not confusing, complicated, or even a close call. “Invest in Kids” should be called “Disinvest in Kids,” or, according to the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, “Invest in Inequality.” (I strongly encourage you to click that link and read a short, elegant explanation of how this “peculiar tax policy” works and what its impact is.) 

“Invest in Kids” should not, under any circumstances, be extended past its already-extended expiration date of January 2024. But in Eric Zorn’s recent clear, precise column about the drawbacks of “Invest in Kids,” he notes that Gov. Pritzker has “gone squishy” on this issue, which he opposed in 2018. Squishy, maybe. Scary, certainly. That he’ll sign whatever “Invest in Kids” legislation might come crawling back across his desk should frighten us all.

Tell your legislator you want this program to end here.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Ethics, Fake, Funding, Hypocrisy, Illinois, Vouchers

Illinois: Parent Groups Decry Governor Pritzker’s Decision to Endorse State Voucher Program

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2023 //
3

The advocacy group Illinois Families for Public Schools were shocked by Governor Pritzker’s decision to extend the state voucher program. They were shocked because of his campaign promises not to support schools that discriminate, and they were shocked by the data showing that discrimination against students with disabilities and LGBT students is widespread among voucher schools. Most voucher schools are religious, and they are free to exclude any student they don’t want.

Illinois Families for Public Schools’ Statement on Gov. Pritzker’s Vow to Sign an Extension of the Illinois Voucher Program

Friday October 20, 2023

Illinois Families for Public Schools is profoundly disappointed at Governor Pritzker’s statement yesterday that he is committed to signing any bill sent to him that would extend the Invest in Kids voucher program.

This commitment contradicts the statements he made when he ran for governor in 2018, including his response to our candidate questionnaire:

“I oppose Bruce Rauner’s backdoor voucher program that was inserted into the school funding reform bill last year. As governor, I will work to repeal that measure.”

Worse yet, it conflicts with the values Pritzker has espoused again and again in his time in office: That Illinois is a welcoming and inclusive state where it is unacceptable to treat individuals differently because of their identity, where justice and equity make Illinois a safe space for all, where we want our young people “to become critical thinkers, exposed to ideas that they disagree with, proud of what our nation has overcome, and thoughtful about what comes next”, where K-12 schools are “liberatory learning environments that welcome and affirm LGBTQ+ young people, especially those how are transgender, nonbinary, intersex, Black, Indigenous, people of color, people with disabilities, and all communities that experience marginalization.”

Since 2018, the Invest in Kids voucher program has diverted more than $250 million in state funds to private schools, 95% of which are religious. Religious schools, even those getting public dollars, can and do legally discriminate against nearly any protected category of student, family or staff:

  • 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.

Due to recent Supreme Court decisions, there is essentially no way to have a state voucher program that only funds non-religious schools or alternatively prohibits religious schools from discriminating based on religious belief. As such, there is no way to end discrimination in voucher schools in Illinois short of ending the program altogether.

Extending the voucher program is supported by anti-public good extremist groups, including Betsy DeVos-funded Illinois Federation for Children, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, Awake Illinois, and Moms for Liberty Lake County.

Access to a well-resourced public education is a fundamental right. Illinois public schools are still short billions of dollars in state funding needed to educate their students.

Public dollars must be for used public schools that welcome and educate all children, as well as protect their civil rights. Strong public schools are the foundation of a healthy, pluralistic democracy and are a public good that benefits everyone in Illinois.

It is unacceptable to continue the Invest in Kids program in any form.

Why is Governor Pritzker thinking so small when it comes to our public schools?

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Contact: 

Cassie Creswell, 773-916-7794, info@ilfps.org

About Illinois Families for Public Schools

Illinois Families for Public Schools (IL-FPS) is a grassroots advocacy group that represents the interests of families who want to defend and improve Illinois public schools. Founded in 2016, IL-FPS’ efforts are key to giving public ed parents and families a real voice in Springfield on issues like standardized testing, student data privacy, school funding and more. IL-FPS connects families and public school supporters in more than 100 IL House districts. More at ilfps.org.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Education Industry, Illinois, Injustice, Vouchers

Illinois Bans Book Bans!

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2023 //
20

In contrast to Florida, Texas, and other red states, Illinois has taken action to protect librarians and the right to read. The legislature passed a law promoting the banning of books for partisan and personal reasons. And Governor J.B. Pritzker signed it. No book banning in Illinois!

SPRINGFIELD, IL — Banned books will soon be a thing of the past at public libraries in Illinois now that the Library Freedom Act has been signed into law. Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the bill Monday at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago.

Under the new law, public libraries must reject outside attempts at banning books for reasons that are partisan or doctrinal, to retain their eligibility for Illinois state grants.

The law allows Illinois to withhold state funding from public libraries and schools that remove books from their shelves and do not follow the American Library Association’s “Bill of Rights,” which states that books “should not be removed or restricted because of partisan or personal disapproval.”

“Here in Illinois, we don’t hide from the truth, we embrace it,” Gov. Pritzker said in a statement. “Young people shouldn’t be kept from learning about the realities of our world; I want them to become critical thinkers, exposed to ideas that they disagree with, proud of what our nation has overcome, and thoughtful about what comes next. Everyone deserves to see themselves reflected in the books they read, the art they see, the history they learn. In Illinois, we are showing the nation what it really looks like to stand up for liberty.”

Categories Censorship, Courage, Democracy, Freedom to Read, Illinois, Librarians, Libraries, Literacy, Literature

Illinois Will Withhold State Funds from Institutions that Ban Books

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2023 //
10

Good news! The legislature in Illinois has passed a law to withhold state funds from institutions that ban books. Governor J.B. Pritzker is expected to sign it.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) is expected to sign a bill that would withhold state funds from institutions that ban books amid nationwide efforts to pull some titles from shelves.

“Illinois is one step closer to preventing book banning in Illinois libraries,” said Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias.

“Under this bill, we can support our state’s libraries and librarians and protect them against attempts to ban, remove or restrict access to books and resources,” he said.

The state’s H.B. 2789 would require libraries to adopt the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights — which “indicates materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval,” according to the proposed text — or develop their own such statement against book banning in order to be eligible for state grants.

The bill has cleared the state legislature and now heads to the governor’s desk. Pritzker has previously said he supports the bill, according to the secretary of State’s office.

“Banning books is a devastating attempt to erase our history and the authentic stories of many. Students across this state deserve to see themselves reflected in the pages of stories that teach and entertain. I’m proud to support House Bill 2789 and ensure that Illinois’ libraries remain sources of knowledge, creativity, and fact,” Pritzker said in a March release….

“Our nation’s libraries have been under attack for too long—they are bastions of knowledge and proliferate the spread of ideas. That is why I am so proud that my measure to prevent the banning of books passed in the senate today,” said Illinois state Sen. Laura Murphy, one of the bill’s sponsors.

Categories Censorship, Courage, Democracy, Ethics, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Funding, Illinois, Librarians, Libraries, Literacy, Literature

Illinois: District Fires Outstanding Teacher Because of Book She Ordered

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2023 //
18

While traveling in the Midwest, I visited Illinois State University, which has an excellent teacher education program. A leader of that program recently wrote me while in a state of distress. One of her best students, she said, was just fired by her district. Why? One parent objected to a book in her classroom.

Who will want to teach when teachers’ lives and reputations can be jeopardized by one angry parent? Maybe that is the point: Demonize public schools and their teachers to build support for vouchers, where uncertified teachers are hired and the Bible is the beginning and end of all knowledge.

Here is an excerpt from the letter I received:

Tonight, I’m writing to you to share the story of the most amazing teacher I have ever worked with in my nearly 25 years in education–except she is no longer a teacher as of last Thursday. I know you have committed your career to fighting injustices like hers, so it is my hope that you might amplify her story in the fight against misinformation and teacher defamation.

As a teacher educator at Illinois State University, I met Sarah Bonner 10 years ago when she was in my action research capstone class as the final requirement for her master’s degree. During the year I worked with her, I was struck by her approach to education, and I encouraged her to continue working toward a doctorate degree. Since that time, I have had the opportunity to work closely with her, co-designing a framework that paired literature and inquiry as a way to expand 8th grade students’ in rural Illinois worldviews; co-teaching alongside her to maintain my connection to the classroom and to continue to evolve our work; guiding her in her dissertation work where she connected with teachers who were interested in transforming their own teaching; watching her mentor emerging, new, and experienced teachers; and witnessing the blossoming of students under her guidance–especially those who are often marginalized in largely conservative, small schools. I can honestly say that I have never had the opportunity to work with a more compassionate, innovative, and thought-provoking teacher. She’s by far a better teacher than I was when I was still in the middle school classroom, and working alongside her has pushed me to be an even better teacher educator than I was before.

For this reason, I cannot begin to describe the devastation that I experienced when I learned less than two weeks ago that not only was she being attacked by our local conservative “news” station, but that her district advised that she seek union representation to represent her while they investigated the story. She received this news on Wednesday, March 15. By Friday March 17 she learned that she was being put on paid leave the next week so they could investigate–and they hadn’t even talked with her yet.

What was the story? As a part of a book tasting day, Sarah consulted NCTE, ALA, and Good Reads to find award-winning and notable books that would reflect her students’ interests–and checked out nearly 100 books from the public library. One of those books was Juno Dawson’s “This Book Is Gay.” A student picked up the book, a sex education book for LGBTQ+ youth, snapped some pictures of its pages, and sent those pages home. Rather than approaching Sarah with questions or concerns, this child’s parents alerted the media outlet, and a witch-hunt began.

Suddenly, the wild and false allegations began: Sarah was requiring this book; the book was a regular part of her classroom library; she was sharing pornography with children; she was grooming children. And then, they went to her class website, which shared a link to Common Sense Media’s Netflix Documentary page, which so happened to feature Moneyshot, and now she was encouraging students to watch and learn about porn. Ironically, this film hadn’t even been released when she was last in the classroom. The story just kept growing until this award-winning teacher realized that she could not go back to that community again. And so, by this past Thursday, she had officially resigned. In just over a week, a teacher’s reputation, livelihood, and life was completely upended.

Sarah is fortunate brcause she’s got the deep knowledge and experience to bounce back and counter the current narrative. Unfortunately, this kind of experience is not unique, and too often teachers who aren’t equipped to handle it take huge hits. It’s impacting their mental health, their careers, their entire livelihoods. We have a narrative around a teacher shortage. We don’t have a teacher shortage—we have a shortage of respect and support for teachers. And we live in Illinois, a liberal state that requires LGBTQ+ history and contributions to be taught by 8th grade. Too many people are watching the antics happening in states like Florida and thinking those are outliers. They are not. Sarah is an award-winning teacher. She is a leader in and on the executive board of the National Council Teachers of English. And yet, she will no longer impact the lives of so many students.

Democracy is in peril as we continue to bow to pressures to restrict the books students can read. We cannot normalize allowing a few loud voices’ the power to destroy careers and lives. I have attached the statement she wrote and read to her board upon her resignation.

Here is Sarah Bonner’s statement to her school board:

Thank you to the Heyworth Board and Administrative team for allowing me to speak this evening. If you know anything about me as a professional, you know that this is not the way I would have chosen to be here tonight. Twenty years ago when I was given the keys to my very first classroom, I knew teaching was my calling. And, while I’ve taught in previous school districts over the years, Heyworth was the place that allowed me to become the professional I was meant to be.

Throughout my time here, I earned both my Masters and Doctorate degrees with the help of district tuition waivers. I became the National Council of Teachers of English (or NCTE) Media Literacy Teacher of the Year in 2018 along with the national Outstanding Middle Level Educator award the following year. I wrote and published a book through Teachers College Press to further the teaching field. Additionally, I hosted and supported numerous future teachers from Illinois State University as they began their journey into the classroom. Lastly – most importantly – I had the opportunity to connect with the best kids I’ve ever worked with in my career.


Our community – or even our nation – may never know the gravity of what teachers bear on a regular basis. For me, I not only worked tirelessly on designing and cultivating meaningful learning experiences for my students, but I also worked hard to maintain healthy relationships with students and families, upheld weekly and transparent communication among all shareholders, contributed regularly to the junior high teacher team, worked a second teaching job at Illinois State University to better support my family, served as the Middle Level Section Steering Committee Chairperson for NCTE, wrote a doctoral dissertation, published a book for teachers, along with being a partner, a mother, and a human wrestling with being newly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

With all of this weighing heavily on my plate, I depended on national communities like the American Library Association and NCTE as well as reading communities like Goodreads to help generate texts that engage all readers with a vast collection of interests. The activity my students and I participated in last week was made up of close to 100 different books recommended from these spaces. Given the nature of the lesson compressed with a heavy list of responsibilities, vetting each and every single text for explicit details was impossible. Should the book in question be available to students? Yes. However, should this specific book have been a part of the 100 choices during this class activity? No. Simply put, the title was on the ALA Rainbow Reading Awardee list and I picked it along with a few others because I knew students in my class had interests. To make students, families, community members feel unsafe was never the intention of my decision making.

While I’m saddened by how the events have played out over the last week, there’s a piece of me that isn’t surprised. Being an innovator in teaching means that boundaries, perspectives, and ideas need to be pushed. When I realized years ago that our kids who would receive these amazing scholarships to these Big 10 schools were coming back the following year because they couldn’t adjust to life outside of a rural small town, I knew I needed to do something. I knew I needed to disrupt traditional learning practices to embody the needs of today’s world. Our kids deserve learning experiences that prepare them for our world and not just our town. However, being a changemaker often comes with a cost…especially if you’re one of the only ones willing to take risks and think differently.


London’s favorite soccer coach, Ted Lasso – the man who makes us all believe in the power of believe – said it best ”You know, people have underestimated me my entire life. And for years, I never understood why. It used to really bother me. But then one day, I saw this quote by Walt Whitman. It said, “Be curious, not judgmental.” All of a sudden it hits me. Of all those that used to belittle me, not a single one of them was curious. They thought they had everything all figured out. So they judged everything, and they judged everyone. And I realized that their underestimating me… who I was had nothing to do with it. ‘Cause if they were curious, they would’ve asked questions.”
As I leave here tonight, I hope you will remember a few things:

  1. Sometimes things need to break in order to rebuild it stronger. Encourage
    curiosity. As you enter a space of healing, I hope the district and Heyworth community can find a place to listen and understand that you all want the best for our kids. Our teachers especially deserve to be heard and questioned in responsible ways.
  2. Remember to support your teachers moving forward. If I were them at this point, I would feel scared, unsafe, and paralyzed knowing that I could be next. Our teacher community needs reassurance that innovation is still supported and protected as time moves on.
  3. And, remember the good I brought to our kids and community by taking innovative risks in Language Arts. While I’ve been here, I have witnessed students stand up for other students with disabilities, fight against racism, organize trash clean ups, create documentaries that tell the untold stories of their community, advocate for safe spaces, strengthen their own beliefs, shape their own personal identities, and critically think about the world around them. With the work I’ve been able to do with students, I’m reminded on a daily basis that our kids will be the hope our future needs.

The Heyworth school district has lost a teacher who is dedicated to their children and her profession.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Creativity, Democracy, Extremism, Illinois, Teacher Shortage, Teachers and Teaching

Illinois Families for Public Schools: Vallas Ties to Betsy DeVos Exposed

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
15

MEDIA STATEMENT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Friday March 31, 2023

Contact: Cassie Creswell, Illinois Families for Public Schools, 773-916-7794

PAUL VALLAS LIES ABOUT SUPPORT, CONNECTIONS WITH TRUMP SECRETARY OF ED BETSY DEVOS

DEVOS’ SUPER PAC CHAIR ATTENDS VALLAS EVENTS; VALLAS HOSTED EVENT WITH DEVOS IN 2021

CHICAGO — Mayoral candidate Paul Vallas is falsely denying his connections to former President Trump’s former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and an Illinois Super PAC that DeVos funds.

DeVos funds and controls the Illinois Federation for Children PAC which made a $59,000 independent expenditure in support of Vallas’ campaign last week. On the same day, DeVos’ American Federation for Children Action Fund, a national 527 PAC funded primarily by DeVos and her husband, made a $65,000 contribution to the Illinois Federation for Children PAC.

Yesterday evening at the Sun-Times-WBEZ mayoral debate, Vallas denied having contact with DeVos, stating “I’ve never had any conversations or contact with Betsy DeVos. And our campaign has not received any money from her.” 

The Vallas campaign said on Wednesday evening that “our campaign has not been in contact with this organization [Illinois Federation for Children PAC].”

In reality, Vallas and DeVos served together as hosts at an Urban League of Chicago event on September, 9 2021 in honor of the superintendent of schools of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.

Moreover, the chair of the Illinois Federation for Children PAC Nathan Hoffman has been regularly attending Vallas campaign events in the last month, including Vallas’ February 28th election night party:

Hoffman was a registered contract lobbyist in Springfield for the DeVos-founded and funded 501c4 American Federation for Children until January 2023. 

On June 18, 2022, Vallas appeared on a panel hosted by extremist anti-LGBTQ+ group Awake Illinois with keynote speaker Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at DeVos-founded and funded American Federation for Children.

Paul Vallas’ decades-long history of privatizing multiple school districts in the US and extensive support for transferring public funds to private schools are tightly aligned with DeVos’ ideological opposition to the existence of publicly-run, publicly-funded schools.

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Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Chicago, Education Industry, Elections, Illinois, Privatization, Vallas, Paul, Vouchers

Chicago: Vallas Would Be a Disaster for the Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2023 //
6

Cassie Creswell and Diane Horwitz wrote the following article for Valerie Strauss’s blog “The Answer Sheet” at the Washington Post. Both residents of Chicago, they are fearful of what Paul Vallas will do to the Chicago Public Schools if he is elected Mayor. They urge Chicagoans to reject his candidacy. The latest poll shows the two candidates tied. Every vote matters.

Valerie Strauss wrote the introduction.

On April 4, Chicago voters will choose a new mayor — and the decision could have a profound effect on the future of the country’s third-largest public school district, which is under mayoral control. The two candidates in the runoff election are Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson, Democrats who offer vastly different views of public education.

Vallas is a politician and a former education superintendent in Bridgeport, Conn.; at the Recovery School District of Louisiana (most of the schools were in New Orleans); and in Philadelphia and Chicago. Vallas became known as a “turnaround” specialist, meaning he moved into troubled districts and supposedly turned them around.

However, as education historian Larry Cuban wrote: “Whether, indeed, Vallas turned around Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans is contested. Supporters point to more charter schools, fresh faces in the classroom, new buildings, and slowly rising test scores; critics point to abysmal graduation rates for Black and Latino students, enormous budget deficits, and implementation failures.”

Vallas has also unsuccessfully run for several offices, including mayor of Chicago in 2019 and lieutenant governor of Illinois in 2014.

Johnson was a public school teacher in high-poverty areas where school closures and gun violence affected the communities. He then became an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union and fought to keep neighborhood schools open, expand state funding to district schools and reduce the use of high-stakes standardized tests. He has said he will not cut funding from Chicago public schools if he is elected mayor.In 2018, he was elected commissioner of the 1st District of Cook County, where he led a successful effort to ban housing discriminating against formerly incarcerated people.

The following was written by Cassie Creswell and Diane Horwitz, who are concerned about the privatization of public education. Creswell is a public school parent in Chicago and director of Illinois Families for Public Schools, a nonprofit advocacy group that lobbies for policies that support public education, which it sees as a public good. Horwitz is a graduate of Chicago public schools, a retired educator and a board member of Illinois Families for Public Schools. Both are writing as individuals and are not speaking for the organization.

By Cassie Creswell and Diane Horwitz


In just a week, the future direction of Chicago Public Schools will be decided by voters in a pivotal mayoral election. The two candidates, Paul Vallas, a former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, and Brandon Johnson, a former teacher and teachers union organizer, offer diametrically opposed visions for schools in Chicago, which will remain under mayoral control at least through January 2027.

We see the choice as stark. Will Chicago move in the direction of school privatization, a movement gaining ground in a number of states around the country with the growth of charter schools as well as school funding programs that use public money to fund private and religious education?

Or will there be a commitment to well-resourced neighborhood schools and increased funding that would be used to reduce class size, expand mental health services and bilingual education, and ensure that every school has a nurse and a librarian?
Will there be a recognition that the conditions in which many Chicago public school students live — in impoverished and segregated communities marked by violence and disinvestment — must be tackled as part of a broad education improvement agenda?

Johnson’s education platform emphasizes that families should not have to leave their communities or compete to secure a spot in a school that meets their needs and includes a library, music and art program, and small class sizes. He says that neighborhood schools contribute not only to the well-being of students but also to that of the communities in which they are located.

Saying that Chicago public schools are underfunded, he has called for more resources from the state that would be distributed based on the needs of a school’s student population and not solely on enrollment numbers. He has called for creating sustainable community schools with wraparound supports and his education plan integrates proposals for affordable housing, transportation and safety.

Vallas has criticized the operation of Chicago public schools and says he will make schools safer while creating new programs to bring back students who have left the system. He also said he would work to expand alternatives to public schools for families and would change the way schools are funded to “follow the student.”

Vallas has long supported initiatives that critics say are aimed at privatizing public education. He spelled out his vision for the future of Chicago’s school system in a little-noticed op-ed that he wrote for the Chicago Tribune in February 2022, months before declaring his candidacy — and that is what we focus on here. Here are some of his most revealing statements:

Expanding vouchers

Vallas supports expanding Illinois’ existing “Invest in Kids” voucher program, a tax credit scholarship program that offers a 75 percent income tax credit to individuals and businesses that contribute to organizations that pay for private and religious schools. A full 95 percent of participating schools are religious. More than 4,000 Chicago students were funded in this way in the last school year.

Vallas has also floated the idea of using tax increment financing (TIF) dollars to pay for K-12 school vouchers during the current campaign. TIF is a complex, and often misused, public financing initiative designed to fund development through investments and infrastructure in economically struggling communities.

The details of Vallas’ proposal in the Tribune highlight a fiscal initiative that we think is rash. He proposes applying TIF surplus dollars to cover teachers’ pension costs, and then using money that should be earmarked for pensions for vouchers. Vallas says this will allow these diversions of funds to be “legally accomplished.” One of the key concerning legacies of Vallas’ time as the chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools was years of unpaid pension debt, generated by diverting funds that should have gone to teachers’ pensions into operating costs.

Religious charter schools

In Oklahoma, the Catholic Church recently asked the state to establish a virtual, openly religious charter school. In December 2022, Oklahoma’s outgoing attorney general issued a controversial legal opinion supporting the church’s application, saying that prohibiting religious charter schools violated the First Amendment. It was praised by Oklahoma’s Republican governor and state superintendent.

Ten months earlier, Paul Vallas’ op-ed called for religious contract schools, a type of charter school, to be established in Chicago. He wrote: “Longer term, the city can invite state-recognized parochial and private schools to become ‘contract schools’ in which the district contributes to or covers tuition for students who attend.”

Oklahoma’s new attorney general, a conservative Republican, took office in January and quickly rescinded his predecessor’s opinion, saying it “misuses the concept of religious liberty by employing it as a means to justify state-funded religion.”

Vallas also gave a nod of support to the 2022 Supreme Court Carson v. Makin decision, in which six ultraconservative justices ruled that the state of Maine could not exempt religious institutions from a school voucher program.

An unusual precedent

Vallas justified his vision for charter school expansion on “a long history of contracting out for private educational services. There is precedent.”

He then wrote:

“The Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education grants the right to equitable educational opportunity. It is a right guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Those in power in Chicago have chosen to interpret this right as a mandate that all public financing of education be allocated exclusively to ‘public’ or government-run schools.”

Let it be noted that after Brown v. Board of Education, many communities in Southern states responded by spending public dollars on private schools using voucher schemes — private academies created for White students whose families refused to send them to public schools with Black children and were given public dollars to fund tuition.

It seems to us that Vallas is twisting the import of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, using it to include the use of public dollars to fund children’s departure from public — or, as he called them, “government- run” — schools. His use of the phrase “government-run schools” mirrors the language used by former president Donald Trump and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, who framed public education as a government institution essentially holding students hostage.

Private and religious schools that take public funds are not bound by the same anti-discrimination regulations as public schools, leaving them free to discriminate on the basis of disability, LGBTQ+ status, parenting and pregnancy status, English-language learner status and religion itself.

“Dollars follow students”


Vallas ended his op-ed by saying that he supports the “explicit endorsement of a reconstituted system in which parents get to direct the per-pupil public dollars to the school (or education model) of their choosing.”

This is exactly what DeVos has long advocated: “Fund students, not systems.”

DeVos is a leader in the national movement toward the privatization of our public schools, via vouchers, charter schools — which are publicly funded but privately operated — and other often poorly regulated funding programs. Those include education savings accounts and direct financial support for home schooling. The goal: discrediting and dismantling our public schools districts.
Vallas was clear about his plans, which would work toward that goal in Chicago. It’s up to the voters now.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Failure, Illinois, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: Chicago Voters! Don’t Be Fooled by Paul Vallas!

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2023 //
5

Paul Vallas is running for mayor of Chicago again. Mercedes Schneider warns the voters of the Windy City to beware.

When Vallas ran before, he garnered only 5% of the vote. But this time, he is a contender. Vallas has a long record in education. He has imposed privatization wherever he went, or in the case of New Orleans, happily advanced the privatization agenda.

She begins her post:

In January 2018, I posted about Paul Vallas, who was at the time dropping hints about becoming Chicago’s next mayor. Vallas ran and lost, winning only 5.4 percent of the vote in the February 2019 general election.

Four years later, in January 2023, Vallas is considered a real possibility (see also hereand here) for at least landing in a mayoral-race runoff following Chicago’s February 28, 2023, general election.

Vallas as mayor would be bad news for Chicago. Full stop. On January 24, 2023, the Chicago Tribune posted this benign candidate bio for Vallas, but don’t be fooled, Chicago. Vallas is anything but benign.

Chicago voters need to be informed about what they would be getting should Vallas become mayor. Therefore, I am reposting some of the Vallas history I posted four years ago, in 2018.

Vallas is terrible with budgets and with fulfilling promises, but through it all, he has managed to serve and protect his own interests.

Please open the link and read her summary of Vallas’ career.

Categories Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Elections, Illinois, Philadelphia, Privatization
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