Invest in Kids scholarships soared in final year: Data

In the last year before its demise, the state’s Invest in Kids tax credit scholarship program had a record number of scholarship recipients and substantial jumps in participating schools and contributions.

The program supported more than 15,000 students with scholarships in the 2023-24 academic year, a 56% increase from the previous year, according to Department of Revenue data obtained by the Tribune.

Financial contributions totaled more than $90 million for the program’s final year, up from $75 million last year. However, the number of contributions decreased by about 500 to a total of 4,700 donations. That’s roughly an average donation of $19,400 for the 2023-24 year.

Invest in Kids prompted fierce debate over the merits of what some saw as a volatile school choice program inadvertently taking away dollars from public schools.

Empower Illinois, a scholarship-granting organization based in Chicago, awarded the largest share of money in the 2023-24 academic year, distributing more than half of the total funds collected to roughly 10,000 students across Illinois.

The most common donation received by Empower Illinois was about $1,000, said Bobby Sylvester, executive director for community and government relations.

The hike in donations can be partly attributed to the increased media attention to the issue last summer after Gov. J.B. Pritzker left the measure out of the annual state budget, Sylvester said. Donors, he said, wanted to show they supported the program before legislators voted on whether to extend it.

“Certainly, there were people who were trying to contribute to show that they support this program and that they thought this was a great program that should continue,” Sylvester said.

Signed into law in 2017, Invest in Kids provided a 75% tax credit, capped at $1 million, on donations to private school scholarships, subsidizing tuition for thousands of students.

Students apply for scholarships, and a handful of nonprofits distribute the aid to schools in lump sums, covering a full year of tuition. Eligibility was limited to students whose families earned up to 300% of the poverty level the year before they applied.

The program had support among Republican legislators, who favor a school choice agenda and have fought against public school