Dr. Paul Bruno, an assistant professor and education researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, focused on two components of the bill that are impacting Illinois schools. First, beginning with this school year, the bill requires that school districts offer high school students the opportunity to take what the state considers a rigorous computer science course. Bruno indicated it is too early to know how districts will implement this requirement or whether students will benefit. However, there are likely to be challenges associated with finding teachers, making space in the curriculum, and ensuring equitable opportunities for students of different backgrounds.
Dr. Bruno noted the legislation required a review of the Evidence-Based Funding (EBF) formula used to fund K-12 schools. This review identified many unmet needs among Illinois' students. Some of these could be solved by fully funding the formula, which is currently unlikely to happen for many years. They also identified potential weaknesses in the formula itself, primarily related to not accounting for the costs associated with student need or disadvantage. For example, the formula currently tries to account for whether a student is at a low-income status, but not for how deep a student's poverty might be.
Addressing these issues will require dealing with the fact that raising additional tax revenue for schools in Illinois is often politically or legally challenging. Moreover, when new revenue is generated, much of it must be used to pay down teacher pension liabilities, and these expenditures thus do not make their way to current K-12 students.
