Month: November 2022

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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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Statement Against the Impeachment of DA Larry Krasner

  By Criminal Justice

A decision by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to impeach Larry Krasner is wrong on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to begin. But perhaps it’s best to start with basic principles. Impeachment in US or Pennsylvania constitutional law was never thought of as a means to pursue policy goals. It is not meant to be a way for the majority of the legislature to replace officials who follow policies they do not favor. It was designed to enable the General Assembly to protect the separation of power against officials who overstep its bounds or to remove officials who are corrupt. The General Assembly’s disagreement with Larry Krasner is over his policies. There are ways to influence those policies short of impeachment. Legislators can revise state laws that give the DA discretion in certain areas. They can give, and have given, concurrent authority to other prosecutors in… Continue reading

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Memo: Another Blue Shift Coming

  By 2022

TO: Editorial Board Writers, Columnists, and Other Interested Parties FROM: Marc Stier, Director, Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center SUBJECT: Another blue shift coming in PA election returns DATE: November 7, 2022   In late October of 2020, we released a paper titled, “2020 Election Expectations: High Numbers of Mail-Votes and the Blue Shift.” We explained that due to Democrats being far more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, the initial count of the votes on Election Day would show Republicans ahead in many state-wide and local races—but that as mail ballots were counted, there would be a “blue shift” as vote tallies showed Democrats’ number of votes catching up to, and in many cases surpassing, the Republicans’. We warned that Donald Trump and his followers would use the blue shift to buttress their claims that the 2020 election was rigged—claims that began long before Election Day. Our predictions about… Continue reading

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If you do your part, things are looking good for Tuesday

  By 2022

I’m not at all certain about what is doing to happen on Tuesday. But I’m becoming more confident that IF YOU ALL DO YOUR PART–knocking on doors and getting out to vote yourself–the results will be good. Two strong pieces of evidence. First, a recent poll of people 19-29 , shows that people that age (1) say the will turn out at rates equal to 2018 and, in battlegrounds states like PA, at rates 5 points higher than 2018. And they support Democrats for Congress by a 2-1 margin. Second, to judge by who are the new voters, and who sought and are returning mail ballots in PA (and elsewhere) women are coming out to vote very heavily to save abortion. I know the polls are close everywhere. But the results of polling in close elections at this stage of the game are heavily dependent on estimates of who is going… Continue reading