Chicago School Board Denounces Trump's Voucher Scheme
Board urges Illinois Gov. to opt out of federally-funded vouchers
Even as the Trump Administration puts forth one bad idea after another, pockets of resistance aim to prevent a total erasure of key American institutions.
The Chicago School Board, for example, is denouncing Trump’s federal school voucher scheme.
As Gov. JB Pritzker weighs opting Illinois into a Trump-backed tax credit scholarship program, the Chicago Board of Education decided after an impassioned debate to push him to avoid it.
The board voted 15-0, with three abstentions, to adopt a resolution Wednesday that denounces the Trump administration’s efforts “to expand and incentivize voucher or publicly funded scholarships for private schools” and criticized private schools as nontransparent institutions.
Robert Kim of the Education Law Center writes that opting-in poses risks to state public education - from both a funding and student outcomes perspective.
Any claim that allowing public tax dollars to be redirected to school vouchers is “about putting students first,” as Duncan and Elzora say, is counterfactual. Students taking vouchers have worse educational outcomes. Private schools receiving public money are free to discriminate against students on the basis of race, ability, and/or LGBTQ+ identity. And waste, fraud, and abuse have always gone hand-in-hand with private school vouchers.