Report: Illinois tax-credit scholarship students see largest year-over-year learning gains
The Illinois State Board of Education released a late, flawed report on the Invest in Kids scholarship program. Despite comparing apples to oranges, the report shows the Invest in Kids program worked for low-income kids.
The Illinois State Board of Education released a report analyzing the Invest in Kids program showing students with the largest year-over-year learning gains were scholarship recipients.
Low-income students who received tax-credit scholarships outperformed their more-comparable low-income peers in Illinois public schools.
But the report is late, coming after lawmakers could have used the information and decided to save the scholarships. It is also flawed in its methods.
First, it fails to compare Invest in Kids scholarship recipients to their demographic counterparts in Illinois public schools. Instead, it compares low-income scholarship recipients to the whole of Illinois students, including those from upper income homes.
Not only was the report flawed, it was also four years overdue. And while a preliminary report from June 2023 existed, it was never disclosed by the state.
The Illinois legislature killed the Invest in Kids program in November 2023 after teachers unions funneled nearly $1.5 million to lawmakers ahead of session and publicly opposed the program with misleading information.
The report’s readers ought to be cautioned by its failures and its subsequent lack of a more meaningful and comparable analysis of scholarship students and public students.
It’s telling when an administration must rely on a late, flawed study in order to further tank a program supported by the majority of voters but opposed by lawmakers’ union friends.
The report proved the Invest in Kids program was a lifeline to struggling low-income students in public schools
The report analyzed year-to-year learning gains among scholarship recipients and Illinois public school students and found the largest year-to-year learning gain was recorded by a subset of scholarship students.
Invest in Kids students had a “significantly larger average increase in scale scores one year later compared to the average public-school student” among scholarship students and public students who scored at the lowest performance level on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness’ reading exam.
That means scholarship students struggling at the lowest levels of reading proficiency experienced more growth at their private school than their public-school counterparts.
Over one-quarter of Illinois low-income public-school students in grades 3-8 scored at the lowest reading proficiency level in 2023. In Chicago Public Schools, almost one-third of low-income students scored at the lowest reading proficiency level.
The report’s findings about the learning gains for students at the lowest reading proficiency level at the private schools shows how the Invest in Kids program was a lifeline to low-income students struggling in public schools.
The report is significantly flawed by failing to compare scholarship recipients to their appropriate counterparts
Good studies compare similar subject groups: apples to apples. The state’s report comparing Invest in Kids scholarship recipients to all Illinois students – not just those who are low-income or in the same geographic area – is not a good study.
WestEd, the group hired by the state to analyze the learning gains and achievements of scholarship recipients compared to public school students, used 13,395 unique scholarship student records across three academic years for the analysis. The authors noted the files for Invest in Kids recipients lacked student-level demographic information and that inhibited the analysis and comparisons.
“Instead of conducting student-level analysis matching public and private school students by demographic characteristics, WestEd could only compare IIKA scholarship recipients’ scores to average statewide scores for public school students,” the report states.
This inability to match public and scholarship students by demographic characteristics harms the integrity of the results. The known make-up of the scholarship recipients, including the students’ required income level and region for application, means a more meaningful analysis should have included comparisons with the data disaggregated by income level and region.
Failed to disaggregate by income level
The report did not disaggregate the data based on income level but compared the whole set of scholarship recipients to the average Illinois public school student.
While some demographic student-level data for scholarship recipients may have been unavailable, each student that applies for an Invest in Kids scholarship must prove their family income is below 300% of the federal poverty level.
Annual reports on the Invest in Kids scholarship showed two-thirds of the students who received Invest in Kids scholarships in the 2022-2023 school year had a family income of less than 185% of the federal poverty level. For a family of four, that’s $49,025 or less. And 27% had a family income below the poverty level, or less than $26,500.
The Illinois State Board of Education reports annually on the outcomes of public students. The report includes analyses of demographic subsets, including low-income students. The definition of a low-income student by ISBE varies slightly from the income threshold for a student to receive an Invest in Kids scholarship. But it would be more comparable to compare scholarship recipients to low-income public students, whose proficiency rate in reading and math is nearly 15 percentage points lower than the average for all Illinois students.
By comparing the scholarship recipients to all public-school students rather than disaggregating by income level, the results unfairly show scholarship students performing worse.
Failed to disaggregate by region
The authors did not disaggregate the data based on region but compared the whole set of scholarship recipients to the average Illinois public school student.
Two-thirds of the 13,395 scholarship students resided in Cook County where Chicago Public Schools is the largest school district. The performance of CPS students lags the state average, so the lack of a detailed analysis of the students by region may have skewed the findings.
In Chicago Public Schools, third- through eighth-grade students on average score nine and 11 percentage points below the state average in reading and math. For low-income CPS students, the proficiency rate is almost 17 percentage points below the state average in reading and 16 percentage points below in math.
It is unfair to compare the achievement of scholarship recipients – 68% of whom reside in Cook County and most likely left failing Chicago Public Schools for their private school of choice – to the achievement of all Illinois public school students.
The authors should have disaggregated the data to show how scholarship students compared to public school students in school districts within their respective regions.
The report should not derail support for Invest In Kids
The study released by the Illinois State Board of Education should not derail the efforts to revive the scholarship program. It provided a lifeline for thousands of Illinois families whose students needed an alternative to their public school but couldn’t afford to provide another option.
The flaws in the report are significant and the thousands of low-income students from whom scholarships were ripped by lawmakers last fall deserve better than to have their program further tarnished by incomplete reporting.
Illinois bucked the national trend in 2023 by killing its private school choice program in a year which saw 18 states expand or enact programs. Nine of the 12 Midwestern states have private school choice scholarship or voucher programs in state law, making Illinois a minority for denying schooling options for families.
Support for Invest in Kids is high: 63% of Illinoisans supported the program, according to an Illinois Policy Institute poll.
A new bill in Springfield aims to resurrect scholarships for thousands of low-income students in Illinois. House Bill 4691, filed by state Rep. Tim Ozinga, R-Mokena, would restart the Invest in Kids Act through 2035. It has been referred to the Rules Committee, where the next step would be a hearing.