As part of the General Assembly’s continued attack on school choice for underprivileged Illinois schoolkids, lawmakers sent Gov. J.B. Pritzker legislation abolishing a commission that has independently evaluated charter schools since 2011. The bill eliminates the Illinois State Charter School Commission. That would weaken the ability of new charter schools to open, and of existing ones to remain.
If Pritzker signs the bill, it would mark another significant step backward for school choice options for low- and middle-income kids in Chicago and across Illinois.
The commission most recently overruled a Chicago Public Schools decision to close Urban Prep Academies West Campus, an all-boys charter school on the city’s Near West Side that draws students from Chicago’s most challenged neighborhoods. The school’s academic success slipped in recent years, but charter schools like Urban Prep face much deeper scrutiny, higher expectations and stricter budget demands than ordinary public schools do. CPS moved to revoke the school’s charter. The commission overruled that decision, for now.
Union clout in Springfield
That’s the rub. Illinois charter schools face tough oversight while underperforming neighborhood schools statewide are allowed to fail families for generations.
Big picture: The elimination of the charter school commission signals again how entrenched and domineering teachers unions have become in the Democrat-dominated General Assembly.
Lawmakers also passed and sent to Pritzker a bill allowing for dramatic end-of-career pension spiking for educators. That is, legislators tried to unwind one of the only pension reform policies passed and signed into law. Lawmakers put on the November 2020 ballot a proposed constitutional amendment that would give Illinois a graduated rate income tax.
Yet Pritzker and Democratic lawmakers don’t seem interested in letting voters say yea or nay to an amendment that would permit reforms to pension systems for educators and other public sector workers. Yes, you’re entitled to ask what happened to Pritzker’s famous “Let the people vote.”
Why the commission matters
The commission serves as a court of appeal for charter school operators who, per state law, have to apply to open and operate through their local school districts. Local school boards — some of them wholly owned subsidiaries of teachers unions that feel threatened by the climate of independence in charter schools — often deny those applications.
Local school administrators don’t want to lose neighborhood school students to charters, lose per-pupil state funding — or deal with competitive pressure from high-performing charters.
The charter school commissioners under governors from both political parties have proven themselves to be thoughtful, nonpartisan evaluators of charter schools. This is not a rubber-stamp body for charter operators. It has turned down some proposed charters, and it has allowed some existing but challenged schools to remain open. In eight years, the commission granted nine appeals of 15 submitted by charter operators for final decisions.
If Pritzker signs the bill, which he has indicated he would, the battle over charter schools in Illinois would intensify. Charters that get denied or revoked would be forced to turn to the state Board of Education or the courts to appeal a local school district’s decision. Those are much tougher and more expensive slogs for charter operators.
Cheating low-income families
But school operators aren’t the real issue here. Why should parents, especially in low-income communities, be denied school choice when the politicians making these decisions have it? Why should poor families be confined to lousy neighborhood schools when wealthy families can pick and choose the schools that best suit their children?
And how can lawmakers who graduated from parochial or other private schools — or who’ve chosen those schools for their own kids — discriminate against families who want the same good options for their children?
In Illinois the realistic answer to those questions is: Because the teacher unions run Springfield. That was evident in the roll call on the bill to eliminate the commission. Even lawmakers who have thriving charter schools in their districts voted against the interests of those schools, and of the children who are being educated within them.
State Sen. Michael Hastings, D-Tinley Park, for example, has called Southland College Prep Charter High School in Richton Park a “premier” educational opportunity for the south suburbs.
He’s right. But under this bill, which Hastings supported, Southland would only have been able to open by appealing its rejection from the local school district to the courts.
Governor, don’t take sides against schoolchildren
It’s pretty galling for lawmakers to be running around for photo ops at successful charter schools in their districts and then voting to make it harder for the charter school movement. And harder for families. Hastings was hardly the only one.
Gov. Pritzker, change your mind. Put underprivileged families first. Help give them the same school options that more affluent parents — your friends in the legislature included — already enjoy. Veto this bill. The commission model is working. It should remain.
Editorials reflect the opinion of the Editorial Board, as determined by the members of the board, the editorial page editor and the publisher.
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