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APRIL 3, 2012 | Commentary by ELIZABETH STELLE
Education Spending: The Rest of the Story
Since Gov. Corbett's budget proposal, those who profit from Pennsylvania's $26 billion a year public school system have been gnashing teeth over what they claim is an "underfunding" of the public schools. This misinformation campaign builds on the faulty premises that education spending in Pennsylvania has been cut to the bone and more money wil
APRIL 2, 2012 | Policy Points by COMMONWEALTH FOUNDATION
Pennsylvania Higher Education Spending
Pennsylvania taxpayers subsidize higher education through appropriations to 14 state-owned universities (Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, or PASSHE), four state-related universities (Penn State, Pittsburgh, Temple, and Lincoln), community colleges, and the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA), which awards grants
FEBRUARY 29, 2012 | Policy Points by COMMONWEALTH FOUNDATION
Pennsylvania K-12 Education Spending
Pennsylvania's K-12 education revenue increased from $13 billion in 1995-96 to $26 billion in 2009-10. Adjusted for inflation, that represents a 44% increase in revenue per student.
Recent Blog Posts
MAY 22, 2012
How to Fix What's Broke in Education
Harrisburg Patriot-News columnist Nancy Eshelman rightly sounded the alarm Sunday on Pennsylvania's public education system:
It's the same old story. Every spring, threats of higher taxes, slashed programs or both hang over our heads like thick black clouds.
It's time to yell, "Enough!"
This isn't a midstate problem. Schools across Pennsylvania are slashing and burning programs while jacking up taxes. What we need is someone in power to step up and lead the charge to fundamentally change the way we do business. Our system is broken. We need a better one, one that doesn't rely on property taxes, one that treats education with the importance and respect it deserves.
Ms. Eshelman is correct when she points out that Pennsylvania's public education is broken. But there is a proven policy solution that allows teachers, schools and families to do more with less: School choice. Twenty states have passed education reform that includes opportunity scholarships, or vouchers, to low-income students, and scholarships through tax credits.
The results speak for themselves. After 20 years of trying school choice, our best studies show all or some voucher students improve academically through the policy. The best part? Nineteen of 20 studies show that competition through school choice improves public schools, too. By contrast, simply increasing funding for flagging school districts does not fix the entrenched problems driving persistent failure.
School choice is the new solution Pennsylvania needs to fix its broken education system. With school budgets strained and taxpayer dollars stretched, it's also the remedy that will help students, families, teachers—and our public schools.
posted by PRIYA ABRAHAM | 10:00 AM | 0 comment
MAY 2, 2012
The Patriot Can Do Better Than This...
Our friends at The Patriot-News here in Harrisburg just posted an online poll that asks the following question:
The state Senate has passed a school voucher bill that would allow parents to move their children to better schools at taxpayer expense. Do you support that?
With all due respect to a fine newspaper, that is just not neutral language.
First of all, Senate Bill 1, the piece of legislation in question, is not just about vouchers. It would also expand the Educational Improvement Tax Credit, which is no minor issue, with this program having awarded more than 284,000 scholarships worth $335 million during its first decade.
Secondly, by alluding to doing something new and different "at taxpayer expense," the question implies that vouchers cost taxpayers extra money, but they don't. The money students would take with them from violent, failing schools—to remind you, an act of violence occurs every 17 minutes in one of our lowest-performing public schools—would get spent no matter what, as it would come out of the state subsidy to their original schools. The question is not whether taxpayers have to fork over the cash or not; it is whether students and their parents are forced to use it at a failing, violent school or take it elsewhere. And, of course, in the long run, school choice saves money.
Thirdly, while I would certainly advance the argument that the schools voucher recipients would choose to attend are indeed better than those where an act of violence occurs every 17 minutes, that is also a non-neutral term. "Different" would be more appropriate.
A better way to ask the question would be something like the following:
The state Senate has passed a "school choice" bill that would allow parents to move their children to different schools and have some taxpayer money follow them from the old school to the new. Do you support that?
Thanks to the Patriot for being part of this important discussion. Let's make it as factual as we can.
posted by CHARLES MITCHELL | 03:30 PM | 0 comment
MAY 1, 2012
Philadelphia School District Faces the Budgetary Music
It doesn't take an advanced degree to figure out that something's rotten in the school district of Philadelphia—or that school choice is the antidote. More than half of Philadelphia's 249 schools do not make Adequate Yearly Progress—they are failing. The school district is also notoriously violent: In 2011 alone, it saw nearly 4,000 violent incidents, including 1,437 assaults on students, 1,076 assaults on staff, 116 indecent assaults, 87 robberies, 37 arsons and 642 weapons possessions. Last year saw 10 rapes in Pennsylvania's public schools and all 10 were in Philadelphia.
To cap it all, the school district is almost insolvent, trying to plug a $218 million budget gap that is set to balloon to $1.1 billion by 2017. Faced with such woes, the school district is proposing some serious restructuring:
The plan—subject to public comment and (School Reform Commission) approval—would close 40 schools next year and 64 by 2017, move thousands more students to charters, and dismantle the central office in favor of "achievement networks" that would compete to run groups of 25 schools and would sign performance-based contracts.
As it happens, school choice in the form of Philadelphia charter schools—which have nearly 41,000 students—already saves more than $200 million on public education. That's because charter schools, on average, spend just 83 percent of what traditional public schools spend per student. The School District of Philadelphia retains more than $5,000 in funding for every child that moves to a charter school.
Ultimately, Philadelphia needs more school choice, not less. Opportunity Scholarships or a significant increase to the Educational Improvement Tax Credit would allow parents to use education tax dollars at the school of their choice, and grant an immediate escape to desperate families trapped by their ZIP code in violent, failing schools. It's good that Philadelphia school officials finally see the need to spend more efficiently, but that's a small step toward comprehensive—and necessary— education reform.
posted by PRIYA ABRAHAM | 10:10 AM | 0 comment
