J.B. Pritzker Picks Wasteful Education in Illinois

The Invest in Kids scholarship cost about $6,000, whereas the state spends about $18,000 per public-school pupil.

Letter to The WSJ.

"The final sentence in your editorial “J.B. Pritzker vs. Catholic Schools” (Jan. 20) appropriately sums up the death of Illinois’s Invest in Kids scholarship program: “It’s a moral and political disgrace.” Here are a few more postmortem thoughts that Illinois voters should remember.

Gov. Pritzker sent his children to Francis Parker and the Latin School in Chicago. Both currently charge tuition and fees of more than $40,000 a year. But Mr. Pritzker was unwilling to try to save Invest in Kids, clearly telling lower-income parents that failing public schools are good enough for their kids.

The average Invest in Kids scholarship cost Illinois about $6,000, whereas Illinois spends about $18,000 per public-school pupil. This means Illinois will be spending more to provide inferior education if parents of more than 33% of the current Invest in Kids scholarship recipients can no longer afford private schools. This is a plausible lose-lose outcome given the evidence cited in the editorial about Catholic school closures in the Chicago Archdiocese.

God save us from the scions of wealthy families like the Pritzkers who have decided to devote themselves to public service. We would be better off if they would simply be part of the idle rich and stop helping the rest of us.

Prof. James E. Ciecka

DePaul University

Chicago"