By Paul Vallas | John Kass News
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker appears to regard vulgarity as acceptable. Recall his remarks at the Illinois Federation of Teachers convention in October, when he told President Trump and his cronies to “f— all the way off” — and his defense two weeks later that “all the limits are off with Donald Trump as president.” Such behavior from a governor is troubling, but what I find most troubling is the vulgarity of his actual education record.
The Governor is currently in full election mode, effectively running for Governor while posturing for President simultaneously, bragging about Illinois’ high ranking in education. The problem with these misleading surveys, whether by U.S. News or CNBC, is that the rankings are largely driven by education investments, not academic results. The fact remains that Illinois’ rapid rise up the spending rankings has not resulted in improvement in Illinois’ abysmal academic performance, nor in an expansion of quality school choices.
Historic funding increases and no accountability
Since enactment of the Evidence-Based Funding (EBF) formula in 2017, the state’s cumulative increases have totaled more than $4 billion in additional annual funding for public schools; that includes roughly $3 billion through the EBF formula. Lawmakers have also increased funding for items outside the formula such as career and technical education, transportation, and other “mandated categorical” expenses. That brought total General Revenue Fund spending for PreK-12 public schools to roughly $11.2 billion this fiscal year.
Depending on the measure, Illinois now ranks between 9th and 11th nationally in per-pupil spending — its per-pupil outlays have grown 34 percent since 2019 — and statewide per-pupil spending exceeds neighboring states by wide margins. According to Wirepoints, Illinois spends anywhere from about 19 percent to 64 percent more per student than other Midwest states. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has among the highest per-pupil spending of large urban districts — sixth-highest among the nation’s 100 largest — spending over $32,000 per student across all funds, an increase of more than 40 percent since 2019.
A discriminatory state education funding formula
Under the EBF law, every district is supposed to be guaranteed at least the same amount of state funding as the previous year, but priority for new funding is given to districts that are furthest below their adequacy target. As a result, many school districts are losing funding in real dollars because of inflation. While a drop in general enrollment doesn’t cut funding immediately, a decline in the count of low-income students can reduce a district’s overall adequacy target even though the EBF protects current cash.
A large number of districts lose state funding every year in inflation-adjusted dollars because districts in the upper funding tiers receive little in annual state funding increases: about 99 percent of all new state funding flows to Tiers 1 and 2, leaving roughly 1 percent for Tiers 3 and 4. This allocation, combined with financial protections against enrollment loss, has enabled districts like Chicago to see state funding grow nearly 16 percent since 2019 even as enrollment fell by more than 40,000 students.
For all the talk about equity, the formula also does nothing to prevent CPS from discriminating against large numbers of its children from low-income households. Public charter schools as a group have the highest concentration of minority and poverty students, with 98 percent of their students Black and Latino and 87 percent from low-income families. Yet public charters receive substantially less funding per pupil — roughly a third less, by one analysis — and little facility support compared with the district’s traditional schools.
Vallas’ contrary continues here.
Paul Vallas formerly ran the public school systems in Chicago, Philadelphia and the Louisiana Recovery School District. He was a candidate for Mayor of C
