YOUR CHILD GETS ONE CHILDHOOD. WHAT HAS SPRINGFIELD DELIVERED?

October 06, 2026•12 min read

YOUR CHILD GETS ONE CHILDHOOD. WHAT HAS SPRINGFIELD DELIVERED?

Jonathan Turley’s education indictment hits home in Pritzker’s Illinois, where increased funding has not resolved deep academic shortfalls and families lost a scholarship option while Democrats controlled Springfield.

By Staff Writer
October 6, 2026

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois. The hardest question at the kitchen table may not be the math problem. It may be the one a parent cannot answer: What do we do if this school is not giving our child what they need?

Parents can help with homework, talk to teachers and ask for additional support. They can encourage a discouraged child to try again. But they cannot stop the school year from passing, and they cannot assume that a problem left unresolved today will somehow become easier next fall.

That is what makes Illinois’ education record more than a debate about budgets, unions or political promises. For families whose children are struggling, it is a question of how much time they can afford to lose.

The state’s 2025 school report card showed 52.4 percent of tested students proficient or better in English language arts and approximately 38 percent proficient in mathematics. Nearly half missed the English language arts benchmark. Roughly six in ten missed the mathematics benchmark.

Meanwhile, Illinois has committed billions more to education, and its Democratic leadership allowed a scholarship program that helped qualifying families pursue private-school alternatives to expire.

Governor J.B. Pritzker and the lawmakers who control Springfield have an investment record to present. Parents and voters have an equally legitimate question to ask: What has that investment delivered for the children still waiting for help?

Constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley puts the issue bluntly in his commentary, “The blue-state model for education has failed, and the public has caught on.” He argues that teachers unions and their political allies have created an arrangement that protects institutional power while leaving families with too little leverage when their children fall behind.

“Families and students have become largely irrelevant to an education cartel, a self-sustaining, self-perpetuating political alliance of unions and politicians.”
Jonathan Turley, professor of public interest law at George Washington University.

That is Turley’s indictment. Illinois’ record gives voters specific evidence against which to weigh it.

The statewide proficiency figures cannot be dismissed as simply another Chicago problem. They reflect students across Illinois, in the education system state leaders help finance, regulate and oversee.

The disparities begin painfully early.

In fourth-grade mathematics, 55.4 percent of white students met or exceeded the proficiency benchmark. Among Hispanic students, the figure was 28.8 percent. Among Black students, it was 17.4 percent.

A below-proficiency score does not mean a child cannot do mathematics. It means the child did not demonstrate achievement at the level the state has established as proficient. But when the shortfalls are this widespread, families deserve a clear explanation of what schools and state leaders will do about them.

For a struggling fourth grader, the next lesson does not wait until the previous one makes sense. Coursework advances, expectations rise and the child must try to close an existing gap while learning something new.

Parents watching that happen need help they can recognize in their child’s daily life. They need to know whether their child is understanding more, gaining confidence and catching up.

Another funding announcement cannot answer those questions by itself.

Illinois’ fiscal year 2026 budget highlights listed $8.94 billion in Evidence-Based Funding commitments, including a $307 million increase. The aggregate increase during Pritzker’s administration stood at $2.1 billion.

Those commitments matter. Schools need teachers, support staff, materials and effective interventions, and those resources cost money.

But spending is a means to an end. The end is an education that prepares children to move forward.

When most tested students remain below the mathematics proficiency benchmark, elected officials should be able to explain which interventions are working, which are falling short and how quickly additional help will reach the students who need it.

Illinois also changed how it measures proficiency, an important qualification that belongs in any honest assessment of these results.

The state revised its benchmarks in 2025 and replaced the SAT with the ACT for its high school assessment. The Illinois State Board of Education warns that the changes prevent direct comparisons with earlier report cards.

State Superintendent Tony Sanders defended the revisions.

“Illinois’ previous benchmarks for English language arts proficiency were the most restrictive in the country, resulting in the mislabeling of high achieving college ready students as being not proficient.”
Tony Sanders, Illinois state superintendent of education.

His explanation deserves to be heard. Students should be assessed accurately, and the revised figures cannot fairly be treated as a straightforward measure of improvement or decline from previous years.

Yet under the revised benchmarks, the mathematics shortfall remained substantial.

For parents, that brings the discussion back to the kitchen table. If their child needs something the assigned school is not providing, what can they do?

Turley argues that asking families to wait for the existing system to improve is insufficient. They need the ability to choose an alternative.

He describes a Baltimore mother’s frustration with her son’s academic experience as a turning point in his own support for vouchers.

“Despite my long support for public schools, I believe vouchers may be the only way to wrest control away from the education cartel by introducing real competition based on academic performance.”
Jonathan Turley.

Turley is a professor of public interest law at George Washington University, a constitutional law scholar and a Fox News legal analyst. Educated at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, he has testified extensively before Congress, including in impeachment proceedings involving Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.

His education argument applies that background in power and accountability to a practical question: How much influence does a family actually have when the institution responsible for educating its child is not meeting that child’s needs?

In Illinois, one avenue of assistance disappeared.

The Invest in Kids scholarship tax credit program expired on December 31, 2023. It gave qualifying donors a state income tax credit for contributions to scholarship-granting organizations that helped students attend private schools.

Teachers unions opposed extending it. Supporters argued that parents needed options when their assigned schools did not meet their children’s needs. Opponents argued that scholarship tax credits diverted resources from public education.

Those competing positions were debated in Springfield. Families relying on the program had something more immediate at stake: Whether assistance would remain available for their children’s education.

In October 2023, Pritzker publicly expressed support for an extension.

“I will support it if it comes to my desk to extend the program in whatever form.”
J.B. Pritzker, governor of Illinois.

For parents, those words offered hope. They did not keep the program alive.

Democrats controlled the governor’s office and the legislature. Their government did not deliver an extension.

The record does not establish what Pritzker privately expected lawmakers to do. It establishes the public position he expressed and the outcome his party’s leadership ultimately produced.

That distinction matters politically. For a family trying to afford another educational setting, the outcome mattered financially and personally.

The child still needed an appropriate school. The household budget still had limits. The continuing assistance the family had counted on was no longer available through the program.

A parent could agree with the governor’s words and still be left without the help those words appeared to support.

This is where the accountability question becomes difficult for Springfield to escape. If leaders support an option in principle but do not preserve it in practice, what are families supposed to do next?

Turley connects that lack of parental leverage to the organized political strength of teachers unions.

Illinois Policy, an advocacy organization critical of union influence, reported that the Chicago Teachers Union disclosed more than $4.2 million in political activities and lobbying expenditures for its fiscal year ending June 30, 2025.

That spending does not establish that the union caused the scholarship program’s expiration. It does illustrate the resources organized interests bring to education policy debates.

Parents must find time to call officials, write letters and attend meetings while working and caring for their children. Unions can sustain political operations that lobby government and participate in financing the campaigns of those who make the decisions.

Turley argues that this arrangement protects the existing system from competition and meaningful pressure to change.

Chicago’s underused school buildings provide another example of why the educational interests of children must remain central to those decisions.

WGN Investigates found that Frederick Douglass Academy High School enrolled just 27 students during the period examined, filling approximately 2 percent of its capacity. Spending amounted to about $55,000 per student, while the small enrollment limited elective offerings.

The investigation identified 13 Chicago high schools that were at least 80 percent vacant and found that 35 percent of district schools operated below half capacity.

Supporters of Douglass described it as an important neighborhood institution and called for help attracting students. That community attachment deserves consideration. Decisions about a school’s future can affect far more than a balance sheet.

But the children attending the school deserve consideration just as urgently.

When small enrollment limits the courses students can take, preserving a building does not resolve the limits on their education. Leaders must explain how their decisions will expand opportunity for the students inside.

The Chicago enrollment findings, statewide proficiency figures and scholarship expiration are distinct issues. They nevertheless lead families toward the same question: When the current arrangement is not meeting a child’s needs, who has the responsibility—and the willingness—to change it?

National polling suggests that confidence in the broader system has weakened sharply.

Gallup reported in September that only 32 percent of American adults were satisfied with the quality of kindergarten through high school education, the lowest figure in its 27-year trend. Dissatisfaction reached 67 percent.

Overall satisfaction fell 11 percentage points from 2024. Among Democrats, it fell 19 points.

Parents were more positive about their own children’s education, with 66 percent expressing satisfaction. That distinction is important. Many families value their schools and recognize the work teachers do every day.

But satisfaction among some families does not erase the obligation to help those whose children are struggling. A system’s successes and shortcomings must both be examined.

This November, Illinois voters can insist that candidates move beyond general assurances about supporting education.

They should ask how leaders will improve literacy and mathematics, how progress will be demonstrated and what happens when an intervention does not work. They should ask what options remain for a family whose child needs a different school.

Above all, they should ask a question specific enough to prevent another vague answer: If my child is falling behind today, what will you do before another school year is gone?

Chicago voters will elect all 21 school board positions on November 3, giving them a more direct role in choosing district leadership. Statewide, elected officials shape funding, assessment policy and the availability of programs that can expand parental choice.

An election cannot teach a child to read or restore a scholarship by itself. It can determine who has the authority to act and whether those officials face consequences when their commitments do not become results.

Pritzker and Democratic legislative leaders have a record to defend. Increased education funding is part of that record. So are the substantial academic shortfalls that remain and the scholarship program their government allowed to expire.

Voters deserve to judge all of it.

Turley’s warning is that institutions can become secure in their influence even as the children they exist to serve remain vulnerable. Illinois should examine that warning closely, and other states should consider the consequences of repeating its choices.

“Only the kids are being shortchanged by America’s school system.”
Jonathan Turley.

For parents, the debate eventually returns to the child across the kitchen table. The homework still needs to be finished. The next school day is coming. Whatever happened in Springfield, their child needs help now.

Before giving Illinois’ leaders another four years, families deserve to know what those leaders will do with the next year of their child’s life.

An administration can recover from a disappointing election. A child may spend years trying to recover from an education that left them behind.