In addition to the obvious issues (church/state separation, draining money from public schools, etc), in the long run this will not help families because private schools will raise tuition in response to the additional money available. Same thing happened to college tuitions with government-subsidized loans. It was ultimately a windfall for colleges, and didn't help students.

This sounds like a really dumb idea. Put any money in public schools.

These Scholarships are based on poverty level. A family of 4 cannot make more than around $80,000 to qualify. This rules out the highly connected people that have been mentioned.

This is actually the best thing to happen for low income families in the State of IL in a long time. One of the main ways to get out of poverty is through education, and so far the public schools have not done a very good job at this. You always here the argument that we need more money for the schools, but the state and more so the City of Chicago spends more on its students than most other states. These Scholarships are based on poverty level. A family of 4 cannot make more than around $80,000 to qualify. This rules out the highly connected people that have been mentioned. Doing the same thing year after year is not gonna lead to better results just the same bad ones.

You wanna take some shots at Chance the Rapper and his donations?

If he thinks handing money over to CPS will make a difference, then he should have done this in a different way. If that's a shot, oh well.

The Schools are not losing any money. They get funds based off of the kids in the school. The amount of the scholarship will be based off of the average spent per student in the state. So if you have less students you do not need as much money in your budget. It will help out minority students more than anything, and I don't blame people for being pessimistic about it. This is a state run by some of the most evil people in politics. One other thing if Karen Lewis is against the program that means it is good for the students.

If he thinks handing money over to CPS will make a difference, then he should have done this in a different way. If that's a shot, oh well.

The state is not funding the program. All the money is from donations. You get a tax credit of 75% per dollar donated.

I am kind of surprised some of you have so much faith int he people that run the government and the public schools. They have done such a wonderful job so far.

Yup. People love government. They can't imagine life with less of it.

things are working so well as is, not sure why they have to go and make changes.

If they only had more money, things would be better. We need higher property taxes because we still lag NJ in being the highest property tax state. We also need more sales tax revenue because the 12% I paid for lunch in the Mecca today is not enough. And thank goodness we have a flat tax in this state so everyone can experience the fun thing that is remitting a large portion of your income to the well oiled government machine.

No changes needed but more money.

Yeah, and this program further undercuts the importance of public school and the funding of the state.

Please explain how the public schools will get better? Have any great ideas? The private schools are only taking money that go with the students. This allows the individual to decide how they want to spend the money allocated for their child. I do understand that some people believe in the state more than the person. I also understand that historically that does not work in the long run. Once again it comes down to give the poor a chance.

I haven't weighed in on the program. I don't really care about it one way or another (pebble in the ocean). Your answer is to put more resources into a failed system. What is CPS graduating these days, 60% of its students? Oh snap, it's 54%. They just need more money!!!

http://www.cps.edu/Performance/Documents/DataFiles/FiveYearGraduationFactSheet.pdf

I am kind of surprised some of you have so much faith int he people that run the government and the public schools. They have done such a wonderful job so far.

Please explain how the public schools will get better? Have any great ideas? The private schools are only taking money that go with the students. This allows the individual to decide how they want to spend the money allocated for their child. I do understand that some people believe in the state more than the person. I also understand that historically that does not work in the long run. Once again it comes down to give the poor a chance.

If you don't care about this program then what are you doing in this thread?

Responding to things I do care about like the size and effectiveness of government.