Facts about Illinois' education crisis
People across Illinois want to improve educational opportunities for all children. They are troubled by both the achievement gap and the spending gap between wealthy and poor school districts. They understand that the costs of inadequate education funding are high. Class sizes are growing; teachers are being laid off; schoolhouses are crumbling and overcrowded; sports, music, and art are being cut — and worst of all — students are struggling to learn.
It is Illinois' over-reliance on local property taxes to fund education that creates the enormous disparities in funding between local school districts. The current system also hurts our communities, with escalating property taxes driving businesses away and pushing housing costs out of reach. In addition, State revenues are not keeping up with the cost of existing services that children and families need.
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- Compared to other states, local property taxpayers in Illinois are responsible for the third-highest share of education costs and pay the 10th highest dollar amount towards school funding.
- Illinois consistently receives one of the worst grades in school funding equity from Education Week. In 2006 they earned a D+; their ranking of C+ last year followed two years of receiving F grades.
- Many schools across Illinois in city, suburban, and rural districts, are being forced to make tough decisions that compromise the quality of education they provide their students, increasing class sizes, laying off teachers, cutting important programs such as teacher training, and relying on outdated textbooks and equipment.
- A shortage of high quality teachers exacerbates the situation. An insufficient number of specialized teachers, inability of high poverty districts to attract and retain teachers, job burnout, and lack of teacher training and mentoring are factors that create instability in classrooms.
- On the most recent "nation's report card," Illinois had one of the nation's largest learning achievement gap between students in poverty and wealthier students and has made no significant progress in closing these gaps in recent years.
- Approximately 40 percent of Illinois' two million public schoolchildren are low income (approximately 825,000 students).
- One in three children who enter school are not ready when they start kindergarten. Yet, 40 percent of at-risk preschoolers cannot enroll in early childhood and school readiness programs because of a lack of program funding.
- One in four of Illinois' public schools failed to meet the annual requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind act.
- The federal No Child Left Behind initiative requires annual achievement improvements among poor, minority and disabled students, with penalties for school districts that don't improve. However, the way education is funded in Illinois does not support that effort. Instead, the Illinois education funding system favors schools with the wealthiest tax base, leaving behind those with the largest concentrations of poor, minority, and/or disabled students.
- Almost one in five of Illinois 881 school districts are facing serious financial difficulties, landing on the Financial Watch and Early Warning List.
- Research has found that fiscally efficient, high performing schools in Illinois spend $6,405 per student per year. Illinois' current foundation level falls over $1,000 short of what is needed to get the job done.
- In Illinois, on average, local property taxpayers fund about 56 percent of school expenses, while the state pays only around 36 percent. This lags far behind the U.S. national average of states funding about 50 percent of the cost to educate a student.
- About 40 percent of the state's 881 school districts operate with deficit budgets, spending more than revenues received. This results from many factors, and occurs in fiscally responsible districts. For example, property tax caps, property tax appeals, and rapid population growth can quickly and negatively affect a school district's fiscal health.
- A huge investment gap exists between property-wealthy and property-poor communities. Per-child funding of education varies widely, from $23,000 to less than $5,000 per student per year, the result of an Illinois school funding mix of local, state and federal money that is over-reliant on local property taxes. The latest available data show that 46 school districts with about 45,000 students spent less than $6,000 per student, while 18 districts with over 48,000 students were able to spend over $14,000 per student.
- Equalized Assessed Value per pupil varies from a low of $11,079 to a high of $1,852,142. Because of the over-reliance on the property tax to pay for schools, low property wealth areas often pay much higher rates than areas with higher property wealth, and still generate less local funding for their schools. For example, a district with high EAV supports a per-pupil expenditure of over $18,000 with an operating tax rate of 1.395, while the low-EAV district with an operating tax rate of 5.725 (third highest in the state) brings in less than 10 percent of its $8,545 operating expense per pupil.
- Local property taxpayers pay local education taxes ranging from $6.67 per $100 of assessed value to $ .94 per $100 of assessed value - meaning a taxpayer in one district pays seven times the tax rate but students receive less than two-thirds of the amount generated by the lower rate. (The district with the $6.67 operating tax rate is able to spend only $8,405 per pupil while the district with the $ .94 rate spends $13,405 per pupil.)