Illinois Scholarship Program Explicitly Excludes White Applicants
The Minority Teachers for Illinois Scholarship Program violates the 14th Amendment, alleges the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) in its Tuesday complaint on behalf of the American Alliance for Equal Rights in the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. The racial criteria included in the program have been “excluding students from a state-funded scholarship program because of their race” since its inception, per PLF’s press release.
The Minority Teachers for Illinois Scholarship Program is not a private initiative; it is funded directly by appropriations from the state budget. The program received $1.9 million, $4.2 million, and $7 million from Illinois taxpayers in fiscal years 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively. Illinois Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Highlights reports that the program is set to receive $8 million.
Illinois’ teacher demographics do not reflect those of its students: 6.2 percent of Illinois teachers were black and 8.4 percent were Hispanic while 16.5 percent of Illinois students were black and 27.5 percent were Hispanic in 2023. The scholarship program was established by a 1992 Illinois state law to address this disparity.
The program was established to encourage “academically talented Illinois minority students to pursue teaching careers…and alleviate the teacher shortage crisis in this State.” To this end, the program offers scholarships to defray the costs of qualifying higher education up to an annual maximum of $7,500 in exchange for one year of teaching in Illinois K-12 schools per year of funding received.
Illinois’ teacher shortage persists: 4,096 teaching positions went unfilled and 3,694 were filled by “hiring substitutes, hiring retired educators, combining classes, and increasing class sizes,” according to the 2023–2024 Educator Shortage Survey published by the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools.
The Illinois statute governing the scholarship programs defines an eligible applicant as “a minority student who has graduated from high school…and has maintained a cumulative grade point
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