Voters Support Education Reform

Pennsylvania parents and voters want education reform.

A new poll from StudentsFirst shows that Pennsylvania families strongly support educational reforms, including incentives for high performing teachers (74 percent support), seniority reform that would tie teacher tenure to effectiveness (70 percent support), charter school reform that would combine accountability reforms with allowing independent authorizers (67 percent), and greater school spending transparency via an online database linking spending and outcomes (84 percent).

Some of these proposals have legislative legs:

HB 1722, sponsored by Rep. Tim Krieger, would base teacher retention on their classroom performance, rather than just seniority, helping both teachers and students. Rep. Vanessa Lowery Brown (D-Philadelphia) is a cosponsor of this bill and highlights her reasons for supporting seniority reform in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

SB 1085, sponsored by Sen. Lloyd Smucker, offers charter school accountability measures while also proposing to let colleges and universities authorize new charter schools. Currently, only school districts can authorize charter schools—which is akin to McDonald’s approving any new Wendy’s, and has resulted in many legal fights. This bill also addresses the “pension double dip” in charter school payments, but unfortunately includes an arbitrary 5 percent reduction in funding for each cyber school student.

Finally, HB 1411 would create a new website, SchoolWatch, that would allow users to track how their tax dollars are spent. This website follows PennWatch, which includes information about state spending, grants, contracts, and salaries. The Commonwealth Foundation created a similiar website, OpenPAGov—which provides school spending, tax, performance, and salary info—giving us a great deal of experience in bringing transparency to government. Check back at PolicyBlog in the coming days to read more from our experts on this effort.