Students at Chicago Public Schools walk along a hallway in this file photo. (WTTW News)

The Illinois Tax Credit Scholarship program offers tuition assistance for families who meet income thresholds. There are no merit components to eligibility.

Lollapalooza will return to Chicago at full capacity from July 29 to Aug. 1, 2021. (WTTW News)
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As the massive four-day music festival gets underway in Grant Park, event organizers announced the launch of a fund that will support arts education over the next five years for more than 100,000 students within Chicago Public Schools.

(Skitterphoto / Pixabay)

The city is making changes to the way neighborhood early learning centers receive funding, and some providers say the changes are destabilizing to families and communities.

A file photo of Chicago State University. (WTTW News)

A two-year budget impasse had many college students fleeing Illinois. Will a boost in funding now help persuade them to stay?

(Brandis Friedman / WTTW News)

A new statewide poll released by the Illinois Education Association shows that residents have a pessimistic view of the state and public schools – but a favorable view of teachers.

Democratic candidate for governor J.B. Pritzker fields questions from high school students during a special episode of “Chicago Tonight” on Oct. 8, 2018.
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Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker wants Illinois to become a national model for education. “There’s no future for the state if we let education drop off the priority list,” he said Tuesday. But he is unable to say where the money will come from to fulfill that pledge.

New data shows enrollment at Chicago Public Schools dropped by just over 10,000 students since last year. The district is now in danger of losing its title as the third-largest school district in the country.

The school district says this will be its largest capital spending plan in more than two decades. But the Chicago Teachers Union believes it’s a “hollow and dishonest” election-year stunt by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson says principals won’t have to worry about early school year cuts this fall, and that CPS will give them “more time, predictability, and support during the budget process.”

Illinois maintains the most regressive education funding formula in the nation, according to a new report. But with a new formula adopted last year, there’s finally hope the state can make its way out of the basement.

(Meagan Davis / Wikimedia Commons)
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State legislators override Gov. Bruce Rauner’s amendatory veto of a trailer bill to the state’s new evidence-based funding formula. But school districts awaiting new state equity funding will still have to wait to get those dollars, according to one bill sponsor.

The Illinois primary is just eight weeks away. Will state lawmakers dodge controversial issues before the March 20 election?

State Superintendent of Education Tony Smith appears on “Chicago Tonight” on Jan. 11.

Approving a new evidence-based funding model for public education last year was the first step in improving Illinois’ long-broken formula. Now the state has to find a way to pay for it.

Gov. Bruce Rauner used his veto pen this week to rewrite a bill making minor technical changes to the state’s new and much-debated school funding formula. State Superintendent of Education Tony Smith joins us.

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Contributors have pledged $38.5 million so far in 2018 to the state’s new and program, celebrated by advocates of school choice but derided by teachers unions and other critics as a subversion of the public education system.

Chicago Public Schools principals learned this week that they won’t lose money if enrollment figures following the first two weeks of school were below projections made when budgets were estimated in July.