Joint statement on release of regulations on federal voucher program: Governor Pritzker should opt out

More than three dozen state and local civil rights, good government, family, labor, community and faith-based organizations in Illinois are issuing a joint statement, urging Governor Pritzker to keep Illinois out of the new federal program, in response to the US Department of Treasury's October 1st release of temporary and proposed regulations to implement the program.

The regulations make clear that participating in this program will hurt educational equity in Illinois and will not benefit public schools. The state will have little ability to regulate the program to prohibit discrimination or prevent fraud, waste and abuse. Federal voucher dollars will primarily subsidize families who already pay for private school. Dollars that do go to public school students in underresourced districts will not offset losses to their school districts due to enrollment decreases.

Joint statement below:

Governor Pritzker is facing a critical decision about whether Illinois should opt in or out of a new federal school voucher program created in July 2025 under HR 1 (the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act.") Previously, the Governor stated that he would not make that decision until the federal government released regulations with details on how states may implement the voucher program.

The US Department of Treasury has now released those regulations. In light of what they contain, what we know about how voucher programs operate around the country and our direct experience with how a state voucher program operated here in Illinois, we, the undersigned organizations, urge Governor Pritzker to keep the federal voucher program out of Illinois.

The new regulations make it crystal clear that the Governor will have no authority to ensure that federal voucher-funded programming meets even minimal quality standards. And the Governor can do nothing to ensure that voucher dollars are distributed fairly across the state.

In the federal voucher program, federal tax dollars are funneled through private scholarship granting organizations (SGOs). Taxpayers can direct a portion of their federal tax bill to go to a specific SGO, which will issue vouchers to pay for out-of-pocket costs of education for individual students. Children may apply for a voucher to any of the SGOs on a state list, whether they attend private school, public school, or no formal school at all. The SGO decides who will receive a voucher, the amount of the voucher, and where the voucher can be used.

Under this scheme, taxpayers receive a 100% credit for their payments to the SGO, and the federal government then has less money for all its operations, including federal funding for public education. The Treasury estimate is that the program will cost $26 billion, mostly flowing to private schools.

The regulations clarify that any state that participates must include every SGO that applies on its state list that meets the few basic requirements stated in the federal tax code. Schools and programs funded by the SGO vouchers will not be required to follow state and federal civil rights laws protecting access to education, no matter a student's disability status, gender identity, home language, religion, or income. Children receiving vouchers, and those denied vouchers, will have no enforceable rights. The regulations expressly prohibit states from placing any stronger requirements on SGOs' operations.

The primary focus of the federal voucher program is to vastly increase the amount of federal tax dollars spent on private schools, which can and do discriminate because they are not required to follow federal and state civil rights laws protecting access to education.

Because private schools already charge families for all programs and services, funneling tax dollars to cover those costs through SGOs, many of them already in operation in state voucher programs around the country, will be straightforward. In addition, the private school industry already has infrastructure to solicit contributions from wealthy individuals, and parents of private school students are accustomed to writing tuition checks.

Public schools are not set up to solicit dollars from individuals and charge families for providing children with education, and, crucially, they should not be doing so. The design of the federal voucher program means that it will surely increase inequity, even within the public school system, with funds disproportionately going to wealthy schools and communities. Underresourced schools will get crumbs, and even those crumbs will require an administrative apparatus that does not exist and for which the federal government has allocated no resources. Meanwhile, public school budgets will be further drained as some portion of their students use vouchers to leave for private school or homeschool.

Our state leaders wrote a promissory note when they overhauled the formula for distributing new state funding to public schools in 2017. They promised that public schools would have full, adequate funding by 2027, a promise most unquestionably owed to communities whose schools have been underresourced for decades. That promissory note is now due, and opting into this federal policy would make it even harder to pay what is owed to our students.

Our state leaders must commit to implementing sustainable, progressive revenue to fully fund our public schools and must advocate vigorously for Congress to repeal this harmful federal program, which-even if our state does not opt in-will damage the education system of the nation as a whole.

Signed,

More background on the federal voucher program and regulations

Fact Sheet: What You Need to Know About the Regulations for the Federal Tax Credit Private School Voucher Program, National Coalition for Public Education (Oct. 1, 2026)

New Case Study of Illinois School Districts Shows Public Schools Stand to Lose Funds Under Federal Voucher Program Institute for Public Good and Illinois Families for Public Schools (Oct. 4, 2026)

Who is likely to benefit from the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit? Brookings Institute. (Sept. 23, 2026)

Civil Rights Organizations Urge Governors to Reject the Trump Administration's Federal Private School Voucher Scheme (Sept. 29, 2026)

About Illinois Families for Public Schools

Illinois Families for Public Schools (IL-FPS) is a statewide, grassroots, non-profit 501c4 advocacy group founded in 2016. IL-FPS is the voice of public school families in Springfield and across the state, advocating to defend and improve Illinois public schools. More at ilfps.org.

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The 135,000 member Illinois Education Association (IEA-NEA) is the state's largest union. IEA represents PreK-12 teachers outside the city of Chicago and education support staff, higher education faculty, retired education employees and students preparing to become teachers, statewide.