Big rallies today in Harrisburg (for those of you who never memorized your state capitals, that's in Pennsylvania) for increased state funding for education. The event was organized by Good Schools Pennsylvania, and at issue is the amount of money that the state will spend on public schools.
Governor Rendell is asking for money to implement many new initiatives, including "providing preschool programs in the poorest school districts, reducing class sizes through third grade, and improving teacher training." Sounds good, except for that little matter of the attached $559 million price tag.
I checked out the GSP website. Heart-tugging photo they've got there. The group is for accountability and higher standards, which is good, but I noticed this in their mission statement:
Public Schools Must be Adequately and Equitably Funded- Pennsylvania will only be able to improve its school outcomes when the funding is adequate and distributed on an equitable basis to benefit all school children.
Now, I actually know little about ecomomics, and even less about funding schools. But most of Pennsylvania's bad schools are in poor districts where property values are very low. Those schools aren't going to receive much in the way of local tax funding. So does "equitable" funding mean that every school should receive the same amount of money from the state - which means schools from richer districts would still be better off - or does it mean that the state should give more money to certain schools in order to balance out the inequities?
Posted by kswygert at June 27, 2003 08:02 PM