If there is any city in America that desperately needs more school competition, it's Chicago. As we've written in the past, there are more than two dozen Chicago public schools where no child is reading or doing math at grade-level proficiency, even though the city spends roughly $30,000 per pupil.
The teacher unions have done all they can to stop charter schools, Catholic schools, home schooling, and voucher schools. The education blob views private schools as "enemy territory" to be colonized.
In 2023, the unions and Governor Pritzker terminated the successful Invest In Kids Scholarship Program that allowed over 9,600 low-income students to escape horrible public schools.
Here's the latest outrage.
The Chicago Public School system (CPS) is selling off 21 properties, but with the requirement that buyers can't use them to sell liquor or tobacco OR, get this, reopen them as charter or private schools.
The Chicago Tribune observed: "That's like selling a candy factory and banning the new owners from making chocolate... If CPS were to create a warning label for this trio, it would read something like: May cause lung cancer, cirrhosis and literacy. This is absurd."
