A bill in the Illinois Senate could axe the state’s first-ever tax credit scholarship program.

The tax credit scholarship program included in the school funding proposal passed by the General Assembly would be the first of its kind in Illinois, and one of the largest of such programs in the nation.

The Illinois Senate passed a school funding reform bill containing the state’s first-ever tax credit scholarship program. The bill now awaits the governor’s signature.

Watch the event here at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, April 22. We will be streaming live from Josephinum Academy. Having trouble viewing the livestream? Click here to watch on YouTube.

Meet Jailyn Baker. She’s a senior at Josephinum Academy – an all-girls school in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. Jailyn is like many Chicago students: she works hard in school and she dreams of a bright future. What makes Jailyn’s experience unique, however, is that she has an hour-and-a-half commute both ways to go to school....

Thousands of Illinois students are trapped in failing schools. These schools fail at their most basic task: providing students with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in the future. Take a look at some statistics from a forthcoming Illinois Policy Institute special report on the state’s lowest-performing schools: 72 percent of students at...

Most people assume that Chicago is home to Illinois’ lowest-performing schools – those schools that scored in the bottom 10 percent on the Illinois Standard Achievement Test, or ISAT. But, in actuality, Chicago is home to only 45 percent of the state’s lowest-performing elementary schools and high schools. More than half of Illinois’ lowest-performing schools...

Thousands of students in Illinois’ rural schools lack access to the high-quality courses they need to be successful in college – that’s according to a recent report published by the National Rural Education Association. In fact, many of these students are unable to take AP classes or are routinely offered only one foreign language option,...