Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3. What are the candidates in Illinois’ governor race — Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker and Republican challenger Darren Bailey — saying about their education platforms?
WNIJ education reporter Peter Medlin looked into it and sat down with news director Jenna Dooley.
Jenna Dooley (JD): Let’s start with Governor Pritzker. What’s he running on when it comes to education?
Peter Medlin (PM): Pritzker’s campaign website talks a lot about his education record. High school graduation rates are the highest they’ve been in at least 15 years.
Pritzker says he’s “nearly doubled” investment in MAP grants for low-income college students, which is true. It paid out just under $400 million-per-year when he took office, and it’s up to $700 million last year.
He says they’ve quadrupled the minimum salary for teachers, which is also accurate. The governor signed a $40K minimum salary bill in 2019, where the previous minimum was around $10K.
And the governor mentions that U.S. News ranks Illinois 5th in PreK-12 education. It also ranks the state 13th in overall education.
(JD): Some of Pritzker’s negative ads about his opponent, Republican Darren Bailey, are also about education, right?
(PM): Yeah, particularly the religious school Bailey founded in 2016 called Full Armor Christian Academy down in southern Illinois.
One of his ads that’s gotten a lot of play is about dinosaurs: claiming Bailey’s school teaches that dinosaurs and humans co-existed. The ad has a bunch of people in T-Rex costumes.
A textbook used at the school does mention this, although not in exact words. Bailey got asked about it and said he didn’t know if dinosaurs and humans lived alongside each other. He said, “I wasn’t there.” Quick fact check: they did not.
Pritzker also said the school’s curriculum teaches that the majority of slaveowners treated slaves well and that women entering the workforce has been harmful to America.
Reporters from KMOV in St. Louis looked into these claims in 2022, the last time these two candidates faced off. The textbook’s publisher told them the part about women in the workforce is “out of context” and that the slaveowner line is real, from a previous edition published in the ‘90s, that they now say is “irresponsible” and untrue.
(JD): What does Bailey say about his education platform?
(PM): He’s talked about how not enough students are performing up to their grade level in math and reading. Bailey said 70% of students don’t hit proficiency benchmarks there.
Those numbers aren’t quite right. About 62% don’t meet proficiency in math and 47% don’t reach proficiency in reading — still a lot, but not exactly what he was saying.
Many people say that’s because schools in Illinois are largely underfunded, even as funding has increased dramatically under Pritzker. Bailey disagrees and says funding isn’t the issue, and money isn’t the answer to every problem we have. Bailey's campaign website does say he’d “fight to ensure our schools are fully funded.”
He also talks about local control, that local school boards should decide how they’re going to educate our children, not the state.
It’s true that there are lots of unfunded mandates in education, and it’s true that the state has standards every public school has to meet. For example, first grade math standards say students should be able to add and subtract within 20, tell and write time, and measure shapes.
But local schools do choose their own curriculum and decide how they’re going to teach those things.
(JD): Are there any other big education issues for Bailey?
(PM): The other main one is that he supports Illinois opting into the new “Education Freedom Tax Credit” — where people can receive a tax credit up to $1,700 and donate it to a “Scholarship-Granting Non-Profit” to help with education expenses. It was created through the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” last year.
Pritzker hasn’t said whether or not he’ll opt-in. States have until the end of the year. Some Democratic-led states have opted-in so far, including New York and Colorado.
The program claims it can be used for both private and public schools, but exactly what it’ll look like is still a bit hazy. The thing is, though, even if the state opts out, Illinois residents can still get the tax credit, it just couldn’t go towards Illinois students, which is another reason why Bailey says the state would be leaving money on the table if they don’t opt in.
But other education advocacy groups say this would create a voucher-like system that would divert federal tax dollars that would otherwise go towards public education and send it to private schools that don’t have to take in all students or meet the same standards.
JD: Peter Medlin is WNIJ’s education reporter. You can find more of his reporting and our election coverage at WNIJ.org. Thanks!
