Analysis of what really happened with PA. education funding

[JPZenger]

Last edited Thu Oct 2, 2014, 05:11 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.ydr.com/pagov/ci_26426364/fact-check-did-tom-corbett-cut-1-billion

The link collects a great deal of information and charts about what really happened with public education funding in Pa. There are also links at the end with analysis by others.

The Dems prefer to look at all money that was provided directly to public schools for educational purposes. This does not count pension fund dollars, which Corbett always includes.

Corbett often uses a game by reporting "basic subsidy" funding by the state. This ignores the many other sources of direct state funding to local public schools that Corbett eliminated.

Sometimes the money that was diverted to charter schools is not deleted from calculations. Sometimes the tens of millions that were cut from public universities is considered.

Corbett also tried to cut funding to public schools and public universities by much larger amounts than were actually approved by the Legislature. For example, he twice tried to achieve a 50% total cut in state funding to public universities, but was only able to get the Legislature to agree to a cut of 18 to 25% (which was still very painful, and which has been an even bigger cut when several years of inflation are considered).

Corbett also tried to eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars of state funds for the Accountability Block Grant program, which mainly benefits school districts with large numbers of low income students. He was only partly successful in getting those cuts approved.

Corbett likes to blame the Rendell Administration for using federal stimulus money to replace state funding for schools. However, Corbett never talks about how he did the exactly the same thing in his first month in office. He changed the approved state budget to use $388 million from the second round of federal stimulus money to allow a $388 million reduction in the amount the State had funded for public schools. Then he used his magic altered budget to claim that it was not a cut in state funding.

This was money that Congress had specifically approved in late 2010 in order to minimize the number of teachers who were being laid off across the nation. The school districts had expected that this money would be distributed to them in the following budget year to avoid layoffs.

On the link, there are tabs above the tables that you can click to see comparisons with various funding sources included or not included.

In any case, in real dollars after inflation, almost every school district is seeing many fewer state dollars being available to pay for classroom expenses and staff. The urban school districts have experienced the worst of the cuts. This is why 27,000 jobs in public education have been eliminated since Corbett took office and why almost every school district has increased their real estate taxes.