{"id":10068,"date":"2021-11-11T00:00:51","date_gmt":"2021-11-11T05:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/?p=10068"},"modified":"2023-07-16T00:08:16","modified_gmt":"2023-07-16T04:08:16","slug":"in-pennsylvania-schools-the-kids-who-need-the-most-get-the-least","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/?p=10068","title":{"rendered":"In Pennsylvania Schools, The Kids Who Need the Most Get the Least"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday,\u00a0a trial\u00a0will begin\u00a0in Commonwealth Court\u00a0to\u00a0determine whether Pennsylvania is\u00a0meeting its constitutional responsibility to\u202fgive every student an adequate and equitable\u202feducation.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The benchmark\u00a0we use to\u00a0identify the level of funding in each district necessary to provide an adequate education\u00a0is the 2007\u00a0costing-out study, as updated in 2020 by\u00a0Penn State education\u202fprofessor Matthew Kelley. As\u00a0required by Act 114, the costing-out study\u00a0aimed to \u201carrive at a determination of the basic cost per pupil to provide an education that will permit a student to meet the state\u2019s academic standards.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Three times in the last ten years, a substantial bipartisan majority in the Pennsylvania Legislature has affirmed the principle that some students, such as those who grow up in low-income communities, have greater needs than others requiring their schools to spend more to give them an equal education: when it called for the costing-out study, adopted the Fair Funding Formula in 2016, and when it adopted the Level Up supplement for underfunded schools in the 2021-2022 state budget. Yet school funding not only fails to meet this requirement but does not provide equal funding to all students. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our analysis<\/span><\/a>\u00a0divides\u00a0school districts\u00a0into\u00a0<\/span>four quartiles<\/span><\/a>, each with school districts that teach a quarter of the K-12 students in\u00a0Pennsylvania.\u00a0For the quartile\u00a0with the lowest share of school-age\u00a0children living in poverty, the gap between\u00a0an\u00a0adequate level of funding per student and\u00a0current spending\u00a0is\u00a0$258\u00a0per student.\u00a0The gap in the quartile of school districts with the highest share of school-age children living in poverty\u00a0is\u00a0more than\u00a0ten times as much:\u00a0$2,802\u00a0per student.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When it comes to racial and ethnic disparities, the results are almost as bad. In the quartiles of school districts with the lowest shares of Black students, the gap between an adequate level of funding per student and current spending is $762 per student. But the gap in the quartile of school districts with the highest share of Black students is $2,347 per student. The gap per student for school districts with the lowest share of Hispanic students is $834 per student. For the quartile of school districts with the highest share of Hispanic students, the gap is $2,795 per student.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why is school funding so unequal in Pennsylvania?\u00a0One\u00a0answer is\u00a0that\u00a0Pennsylvania is 45<\/span>th<\/span>\u00a0in the nation in the\u00a0state\u00a0share of school funding,\u00a0which\u00a0at\u00a038%\u00a0is\u00a0far below the national average of\u00a047%.\u00a0(In 1975-1976, the state share was\u00a055%.)\u00a0Wealthy districts\u00a0can\u00a0raise far more funding from property and earned income taxes than poor districts, even\u00a0though\u00a0poor districts have much higher tax rates.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Second, under Governor Wolf the state has increased funding to our schools by over $2 billion. But over the last 25 years, after accounting for the increase in the cost of education, state funding to K-12 schools has declined<\/span>\u00a0by 17%\u00a0to\u00a049%<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(depending on how one measures education inflation).\u00a0And, in recent years,\u00a0new state funding has\u00a0gone\u00a0to pay for pensions, charter schools, and other mandated costs, not for more teachers, counselors, or technology.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And third, new state funding made little more than a dent in the historical inequity in Pennsylvania\u2019s distribution of education funding. During the twenty years before 2015-2016, Pennsylvania funded its schools through a series of changing formulas and ad-hoc political deals that failed to direct funding to the school districts that most needed it. Since 2015-2016, new state money for our schools has flowed through the Fair Funding Formula\u2014but close to 90% of the state\u2019s funding of K-12 schools still follows the radically inequitable distribution in place in 2014-2015 and earlier years.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On average,\u00a0Pennsylvania does spend a great deal on educating our children. But that average is pulled up by a small number\u00a0of very high-spending districts.\u00a0For decades, the General Assembly\u00a0has\u00a0failed to meet its responsibility to\u00a0our constitution and\u00a0to\u00a0the vast majority of\u00a0our children, especially those who live in school districts that educate a higher share of students\u00a0who\u00a0are Black or Hispanic or who live in poverty.\u00a0The lawsuit that goes\u00a0to\u00a0trial on Friday asks the court to demand\u00a0our legislators rectify this inequity.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday,\u00a0a trial\u00a0will begin\u00a0in Commonwealth Court\u00a0to\u00a0determine whether Pennsylvania is\u00a0meeting its constitutional responsibility to\u202fgive every student an adequate and equitable\u202feducation.\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The benchmark\u00a0we use to\u00a0identify the level of funding in each district necessary to provide an adequate education\u00a0is the 2007\u00a0costing-out study, as updated in 2020 by\u00a0Penn State education\u202fprofessor Matthew Kelley. As\u00a0required by Act 114, the costing-out study\u00a0aimed to \u201carrive at a determination of the basic cost per pupil to provide an education that will permit a student to meet the state\u2019s academic standards.\u201d\u00a0 Three times in the last ten years, a substantial bipartisan majority\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1896,"featured_media":10074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[169,197,205],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/admin-ajax.php_.jpeg?fit=400%2C219&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35YuU-2Co","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10068"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1896"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10069,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10068\/revisions\/10069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}