Category: Education

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PBPC Supports Senator Vincent Hughes’s K-12 Funding Plan

  By Budget, K-12 Education in PA, PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania Budget, Statements

Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center joined a press conference on Thursday in support of Senator Vincent Hughes’s plan to invest $3.1 billion in K-12 education. The plan would add over $2 billion in K-12 funding from general operating funds, including  $750 million in basic education funding; $400 milllion for additional for the Level Up program, which provides additional funds to the 100 least-well-funded school districts; $250 million for special education; $275 million to reimburse school districts for the cost of charter schools; $150 million for early childhood education; $125 million for academic support programs; $100 million for mental health supports; and $100 million to recruit more teachers. Sneator Hughes also proposed spending $1 billion from Rainy Day Funds for remediation of toxic schools. Senator Hughes was joined at the press conference by Senators Sharif Street, Tim Kearney, Jimmy Dillon, and Nick Miller and Represenative Elizabeth Fiedler. PBPC Director Marc Stier’s… Continue reading

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Statement on Victory in the Education Funding Lawsuit

  By Education, K-12 Education in PA, Statements

We are deeply gratified that Commonwealth Court Justice Renée Cohn Jubelirer has ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in the education funding lawsuit, which sought to have Pennsylvania’s system of funding K-12 schools declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it did not meet the requirement that “The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth” (PA Constitution. Art. 3 section 4). The dry language of law and statistics in Judge Jubelirer’s long opinion fully embraces the moral and constitutional imperative that “every student receives a meaningful opportunity to succeed academically, socially, and civically, which requires that all students have access to a comprehensive, effective, and contemporary system of public education” (William Penn School District et al. v. Pennsylvania Department of Education; Memorandum Opinion by President Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer, February 7, 2023, p.… Continue reading

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Inequity and Inadequacy in K-12 Education Funding in Pennsylvania: Fiscal Year 2022-23 Update

  By K-12 Education in PA

By Marc Stier, Eugene Henninger-Voss, Diana Polson, and Stephen Herzenberg This paper updates the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center’s analysis of the inadequacy and inequity in school funding to take into account the 2022-23 budget enacted at the end of June 2022. Our conclusion is that, despite the substantial $850 million addition to basic education funding and level up funding this year, Pennsylvania’s K-12 school districts remain both inadequately and inequitably funded. The funding gap between rich and poor school districts as well as those with a large and small share of Black and Hispanic students, remains deeply wrong, from both a moral and pragmatic point of view. These inequities are fundamentally unfair. And the harm the long-term prospects of too many of our kids as well as of the Pennsylvania economy as a whole. [1]   [1]. This paper draws and updates previous research by the Pennsylvania Budget and… Continue reading

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Every kid deserves a chance; Republicans don’t agree

  By Education, K-12 Education in PA, Public Policy, Published op-eds

Originally published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on February 25, 2022 Before he became the great liberator, Sen. Thaddeus Stevens was, as state Representative, the author of the first Pennsylvania legislation to provide public funds to ensure that all children, no matter how rich or poor, could secure a good education. Stevens’ support for universal education grew out of the same fundamental commitment to equality that animated his opposition to slavery. Stevens, like Abraham Lincoln, believed that America must give everyone the opportunity to use their talents and abilities, to the best of their ability. Slavery blocked this opportunity, and so he opposed it. Lack of access to education blocked opportunity for every child of the working class, and so he supported universal education. Sadly, Republicans no longer seem to support that ideal. Four years ago, the Republican Chair of the Senate Education Committee, John Eichelberger, said that “inner city” education… Continue reading

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Statement: The Democratic Education Funding Plan

  By K-12 Education in PA, PA Budget and Policy Center, Policy briefs

By Marc Stier and Eugene Henninger-Voss Senator Vince Hughes, Democratic chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Lindsey Williams, Democratic chair of the Senate Ed Committee; Sen. Tim Kearney, member of the Senate Education Committee, and Democratic vice-chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Rep. Matt Bradford. Democratic chair of the House Appropriations Committee and Rep. Michael Schlossberg, House Democratic Caucus Administrator today put forward a bold proposal for new funding for Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts. Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center strongly supports this proposal. It goes far towards eliminating the inequitable, inadequate funding that keeps 89% of the school districts in the state from meeting their responsibilities to our children. For years, we have pointed to Pennsylvania’s failure to provide adequate and equitably distributed funding to our school districts. The pandemic has made that failure even more evident. And the federal provision of ARP funds, as well as budget surpluses… Continue reading

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Economic, Racial, and Ethnic Inequality in Pennsylvania School Funding

  By K-12 Education in PA, PA Budget and Policy Center, Policy reports

  It is well known that Pennsylvania’s K-12 schools are inadequately and inequitably funded. But the extent of the problem is not fully understood. This paper uses new data and methods to demonstrate just how unfair—and morally unsustainable—the funding of elementary and secondary education is in the Commonwealth. Click here to print or read the report full-screen.   Continue reading

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In Pennsylvania Schools, The Kids Who Need the Most Get the Least

  By K-12 Education in PA, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

On Friday, a trial will begin in Commonwealth Court to determine whether Pennsylvania is meeting its constitutional responsibility to give every student an adequate and equitable education.   By the standards the state of Pennsylvania sets for itself, it does not. Only 16% of school districts provide an adequate level of funding. And our analysis of the distribution of school funding relative to the share of students who are living in poverty or who are Black or Hispanic reveals inequities that are striking, immoral, and unconstitutional.  The benchmark we use to identify the level of funding in each district necessary to provide an adequate education is the 2007 costing-out study, as updated in 2020 by Penn State education professor Matthew Kelley. As required by Act 114, the costing-out study aimed to “arrive at a determination of the basic cost per pupil to provide an education that will permit a student to meet the state’s academic standards.”  Three times in the last ten years, a substantial bipartisan majority… Continue reading

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On the PA School Funding Lawsuit: Don’t Change the Subject

  By Health Care For America Now, K-12 Education in PA, Published Op-Eds

Originally published in the PA Capital-Star, August 11, 2021 In September, a group of students and school districts will make a case in state court that Pennsylvania is not meeting its constitutional responsibility to give every student an adequate and equitable education. The conservative Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg think-tank, has called the funding lawsuit misguided. But its analysis doesn’t address the critical question of the gap between what schools spend and what they should spend according to adequacy standards written into state law. Instead, it changes the subject and presents data about other questions, tangentially related to the fundamental question at hand. The lawsuit is not about how much money is spent per student in Pennsylvania on average because a high level of spending could, and does, hide vast disparities between school districts. Those disparities arise because the bulk of school funding comes from local sources. Wealthy districts raise far… Continue reading

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Build Back Better: A Transformative Plan for 21st-Century America

  By Economic Development, Economic Justice, Education, Energy, Infrastructure, PA Budget and Policy Center, Statements, Taxation, US

President Biden’s Build Back Better framework is an unprecedented and transformative plan to better the lives of all Americans—Black, brown, and white; those with low, moderate, or high incomes; the youngest children and the oldest seniors. It will help families care for children while making quality pre-K available to all 3- and 4-year-olds. It will create hundreds of thousands of good jobs, many in unionized trades and clean manufacturing while drastically cutting greenhouse gases and reducing energy costs for every household. It will reduce the cost of health care and housing for millions. And it will make college education more affordable, boosting the future prospects of our young people and our economy as a whole. It will be paid for by new taxes on the largest, most profitable corporations and the wealthiest Americans while cutting taxes for working people—all while reducing the deficit. The legislative process in America is always… Continue reading