Policy Update: Pennsylvania: Finance Fracas

Vital Statistics
500	Public school districts
3,110	Public schools
1.8 million	K-12 enrollment
19.8%	Minority students
17%	Children in poverty
10.6%	Students with disabilities
$13.9 billion	Annual K-12 expenditures (all revenue sources)

The inability to devise a plan for funding the schools that would satisfy all constituents overshadowed steps to adopt new academic-content standards and provide monetary rewards for improving schools.

In November a federal judge dismissed a school finance lawsuit filed by Philadelphia officials against Gov. Tom Ridge and state education leaders. The suit alleged that the state's method of paying for its schools violates federal civil rights laws because it gives proportionately less aid to mostly nonwhite districts compared with similarly poor, predominantly white districts. In dismissing the lawsuit Nov. 15, U.S. District Judge Herbert J. Hutton wrote that the complaint boiled down to a "we need more money" allegation that has been held nonactionable under the 1954 civil rights law cited in the suit. Philadelphia officials have decided to appeal the ruling.

State lawmakers escalated the tensions with Philadelphia in April 1998, when they passed a law that allows the state to appoint a new governing authority in urban districts that are declared in "fiscal distress."

The legislature approved the measure, which the governor quickly signed, after Philadelphia school officials threatened to shut down the system before the end of the 1998-99 school year unless the state provided more money.

The city narrowly avoided a confrontation with the state when two banks stepped in and agreed to lend the district $250 million to keep the schools open through the end of this school year. But the loan is, at best, a temporary solution.

David Gondak, the president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, a National Education Association affiliate, is skeptical that lawmakers will ever flex their newfound muscle.

"I don't think the state really wants to take over Philadelphia," he says. "What would they do with it? They don't have the capacity to deal with it. It's not a practical reality."

"The goal isn't to take over as much as to empower Philadelphia to do things differently," Secretary Eugene W. Hickok says. By differently, he means privatization, charters, vouchers, and other structural reforms.

Earlier proposals to break up the nation's sixth-largest district into 22 separate school systems, provide the city's poor children with tuition vouchers, or convert all of the city's 259 schools to charter status failed to be acted on by the legislature last year.

Philadelphians are not the only ones unhappy with the state's school finance plan.

In July 1998, a commonwealth court judge dismissed a suit filed in 1991 by the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools, or PARSS. The coalition of 218 of the state's approximately 500 districts sought to narrow the gap in spending between rich and poor districts by reducing the state's reliance on property taxes to pay for education. Property wealth, and therefore school revenues, varies widely across the state.

Judge Dan Pellegrini ruled that the funding issue is a political matter best left to the legislature.

He also found that, even if the court had the authority to intervene, the plaintiffs had failed to prove that students were receiving an inadequate education as a result of too little state aid.

Parss is appealing the ruling. But the coalition also is working with legislators to devise a political solution.

On a less controversial front, the state school board adopted new academic standards in reading, writing, and mathematics late last year. Districts were expected to begin using the new standards immediately.

The state has conducted workshops for teachers about the standards. And it is planning to send them CD-ROMS and other materials. It also plans to send information home to parents and students.

Hickok says he expects the standards and aligned assessments to be fully in place by 2001.

State leaders are dangling a carrot to encourage schools to do better. In October 1998, they announced the first recipients of state-funded rewards for good performance. One thousand schools statewide received monetary rewards for a total of more than $10 million. Schools can earn the rewards by improving achievement on state assessments or by improving their attendance and graduation rates. The state has allocated $13.4 million for the incentives in 1998-99. A committee at each school can decide how to spend the reward, with at least 50 percent going toward the instructional program and up to 25 percent to reward individual teachers.

On the other end of the spectrum, lawmakers are weighing proposals to intervene in low-performing schools. The new standards and assessments will make it easier to identify such schools.

For now, the state is holding schools accountable by publishing information on a school-by-school basis. The state produces profiles on each of its more than 3,100 schools that are available to the public on CD-ROM and on the World Wide Web.

The reports include test scores and other achievement data, as well as information on enrollment, school finance, attendance, dropout rates, program information, and class size.

During his successful re-election campaign, Ridge, a Republican, also pledged to launch an initiative that would ensure all students are reading by the end of grade 3. The proposal would provide targeted assistance to districts with the greatest need for intensive reading-instruction programs.

Competition may also spur schools to improve. Twenty-five charter schools opened in the fall of 1998, bringing the total number to 31. About 4,300 students--or less than 1 percent of the school population--now attend such schools.The speed with which some of the charter schools got off the ground suggests "that at the grassroots level there is a real interest in doing things differently," Hickok says.

In an effort to hold teachers to a higher standard, state officials raised the cutoff score needed to pass a teacher-licensure test.

As part of the governor's Teachers for the 21st Century initiative, the state board of education also was expected to approve more-rigorous standards for entry into and graduation from teacher training programs.

Under the requirements, students would need a B average in liberal arts or general education to enter a teacher education program. To graduate, they would have to take the same subject-matter courses as students majoring in an academic discipline and maintain a B average in those courses.