By Paul Vallas

July 31, 2026

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.

Continued abysmal academic performance

EBF funding is largely unrestricted, meaning districts are not directly penalized or rewarded based on whether they meet specific student-achievement benchmarks. It has also been accompanied by changes in state academic standards and school accountability. Little wonder that while Illinois spends more per student than most states, it continues to lag in academic outcomes — indicating that more money alone has not solved performance problems.

Recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data show only about a third of Illinois students achieve proficiency in core subjects, highlighting severe gaps. Roughly 30 percent of 4th graders and 33 percent of 8th graders are proficient in reading. In math, 38 percent of 4th graders and 32 percent of 8th graders meet proficiency standards. Significant disparities persist along racial and socioeconomic lines: in 8th-grade math, just 9 percent of Black students and 18 percent of Hispanic students statewide reach proficiency.

Chicago’s NAEP scores are significantly worse, with proficiency rates trailing national and state averages across the board — and other large cities on nearly every measure. CTU President Stacy Davis Gates has called standardized testing “junk science rooted in White supremacy,” and the union has pressured the district to all but abandon using tests to evaluate students, teachers, or school performance. The district has dropped test scores from grade-promotion decisions and no longer rates or ranks schools by academic performance.

Lowering academic standards and abandoning accountability

Despite historic increases in funding — and constant union complaints about “underfunding” — Pritzker’s education policy has centered almost exclusively on spending, with little regard for accountability or results. Meanwhile standards have been systematically lowered, and school choice options — private and even some public — have been steadily eliminated. Illinois students continue to struggle to meet proficiency standards. Instead of taking steps to improve learning outcomes, the state has responded by lowering the bar.

In August 2025, the State Board of Education reduced the scores required to be deemed “proficient” on reading and math exams — a change the board itself projected would lift reported proficiency by 10 to 12 percentage points overnight — effectively masking the crisis rather than addressing it. The transition from the SAT to the ACT — on which Illinois students averaged a middling 18.8 composite in the first year — further muddles the picture of academic achievement.

The state has also abandoned meaningful oversight of failing schools and districts, regardless of mounting investments. Illinois has not launched a new academic intervention in any of its roughly 850 school districts in years, eliminating incentives for local improvement. In 2024, 80 Illinois schools had zero students proficient in math, and 24 had zero students proficient in reading. For thousands of families, educational quality now depends almost entirely on income and zip code.

Protecting the teachers union’s education monopoly

Yielding to union pressure, Pritzker allowed the Invest in Kids private school scholarship program to expire. The program, enacted in 2017, provided private school scholarships for low-income students, but it died at the end of 2023 when state lawmakers failed to renew it. The governor’s office and legislative majority declined to intervene, abandoning thousands of students who relied on these opportunities.

Governor Pritzker has also signed legislation degrading and undermining even public school choice. In 2019, Governor Pritzker signed legislation dismantling the Illinois State Charter School Commission, transferring its responsibilities to the Illinois State Board of Education. This move eliminated independent oversight and the appeal process for rejected charter applications, stifling innovation and accountability. Not a single new charter school has opened in Illinois since.

Empowering the teacher unions at the expense of families

Pritzker’s signing of legislation to expand the bargaining rights of the Chicago Teachers Union gave the CTU sweeping power to bargain — and strike — for any reason, not just pay. This includes class size, staffing, outsourcing, as well as the union’s non-education priorities. He also signed legislation facilitating the CTU’s unionization of public charter school employees and delaying the transition to a fully elected school board. The latter allows the CTU’s chief organizer-made-Mayor to control the school board through his appointees until January 2027.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the CTU used its power to keep public school campuses closed for some 17 months — a year longer than parochial schools and months longer than most public districts. The academic damage wrought by remote learning has been well-documented, and the social consequences have been severe: gun deaths of Chicago children 17 and under rose more than 70 percent between 2019 and 2022, and by one count more than 1,700 school-age youths have been murdered or wounded since schools resumed normal schedules.

Forgoing federal support for families with children

While Pritzker works overtime attacking the Trump administration, he has been conspicuously noncommittal about opting into the federal tax credit program in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allows taxpayers to claim a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit of up to $1,700 for donations to scholarship-granting organizations, or SGOs, to fund a range of services such as tutoring, transportation, special education services, and learning technology. The potential scale is significant.

According to a recent analysis by Education Reform Now, 30 percent taxpayer participation would generate nearly $986 million a year in Illinois — funds that could expand tutoring, special services, and learning time without reducing state education budgets for both private and public school children. During the pandemic, states used federal relief funds to provide those services, but those dollars have dried up. Unless states find new ways to sustain them, millions of students will be left even further behind.

Pritzker’s office claims the program could divert funding from public education, while his allies warn it would support private schools with less accountability and could potentially fund institutions with discriminatory policies. These claims, however, are unfounded and echo the teacher-union talking points that accompany any proposal to support private school tuition for low-income families. He says he is evaluating the program’s impact on public school budgets, with a decision still pending.

Will Pritzker’s political ambition blind him to this rare funding opportunity?

Let’s be blunt: Pritzker has shamelessly caved to teacher union demands for more funding and less accountability while strengthening the teacher unions’ education monopoly. That he might oppose participation in a program that would provide private school families tuition support, even when those programs would put dollars directly into the hands of public school families for supplemental education supports, shows how tethered Pritzker is to the agenda of the far-left teachers unions.

Governor Pritzker’s failure to lead is no longer just a policy debate—it is an outright betrayal of Illinois’ children. By caving to union bosses, lowering academic standards to mask failure, and dismantling school choice, his administration has institutionalized mediocrity while handing over billions in unearned, unaccountable tax dollars. If Pritzker truly cares about equity and the future of our state, he must stop putting his presidential ambitions and political allies above the students trapped in a failing system. Illinois families deserve a leader with the courage to demand accountability, put children first, and dismantle the union-protected monopoly that is robbing an entire generation of their future.

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Paul Vallas formerly ran the public school systems in Chicago, Philadelphia and the Louisiana Recovery School District. He was a candidate for Mayor of Chicago.