Parents and kids bowled for School Choice at Wheaton Bowl Sunday afternoon
WHEATON, IL - Even if it’s not yet on the state’s law books, the school choice movement is alive and well in Illinois. In fact, it’s growing.
Sunday afternoon in Chicago’s affluent western suburb of Wheaton, Illinois, parents, students, school board members, teachers, education activists and a member of the Illinois General Assembly met at a neighborhood bowling alley. They were there to celebrate 2015 School Choice Week, have fun, be encouraged and discuss their kids’ futures.
“Education transformation can be summed up with four words,” said Bruno Behrend from the pro-education reform Heartland Institute: “Fund Children, Not Systems.”
Chicago’s public school system is one of the largest and most underperforming in the nation. Recent testing showed only 20 percent of Chicago eighth graders as proficient in math. The same was true in reading. Science proficiency is down to only seven percent.
Those statistics show the system is failing the city, the state, the kids and society. While education experts and bureaucrats conduct studies and experiments to improve schools, young lives are passing through the system, uneducated and poorly prepared for life.
“I’m not willing to waste these kids’ lives while politicians decide how to fix the Chicago public schools,” a charter school principal said in the documentary The Ticket, which was shown at the event. “They’re here now and we’re doing all we can to give them a good education now.”
One Illinois lawmaker who is working to give Illinois kids a good education now is State Rep. Jeanne Ives, R-Wheaton, who told the crowd of parents and students that she’s dedicated to making school choice a reality in Illinois.
Ives isn’t starting from scratch. A pilot voucher program nearly passed the General Assembly in 2010, when a Democratic state senator and a Democratic state representative took up the education reform mantle. The legislation passed the Illinois Senate, but stalled in the Illinois House with the help of downstate Republican lawmakers who refused to support parental choice because of the power of the public schools, which are one of the region’s largest employers.
Ives said she intends to shepherd through the House two education reform proposals this year: one to resurrect the failed 2010 voucher bill and another to increase the state’s tuition tax credit above the current meager $500 level.
A mother of five children that attended both private and public schools, Ives said she and two other Republican colleagues were inspired to try the legislation again after last year’s all out attack on Chicago’s charter school system.
“We’re going on the offense this year,” Ives said. “We’re going to push education choice.”
Adding to the momentum are a growing number of leaders in Chicago’s African-American community. They are calling for their children’s schools to be overhauled or give parents a choice as to which schools they want their kids to attend.
Some of those African-American leaders are actually in the Democrat-controlled Illinois Senate.
“I’ve talked to them and told them how excited we are to know they’re interested in education reform,” Ives said. “But they’re still hesitant. They know where the power structure is and where the campaign cash is, and that’s with the unions.”
One highly respected and influential leader in Chicago’s black community is Rev. James Meeks, who pastors a 15,000-member church. During the ten years Meeks served as a state senator, he was an outspoken advocate for school choice, and sponsored the 2010 voucher bill that died in the Illinois House. Now, he’s the newly-appointed chairman of the Illinois State Board of Education.
Ives and her education reform-minded colleagues believe Meeks’ appointment sent a message: the new Governor wants education reform to be a priority in his administration.
Getting Democrats on board is half the battle, Ives said. There are Republicans that are committed to obstructing school choice as well. “We will call out Republicans that won’t support school choice if that happens again,” Ives said.
Time will tell if Ives and her colleagues might finally emancipate the parents, taxpayers, and most importantly the kids, in the Land of Lincoln.
First published on national publication Watchdog Arena
