By Christen Smith
Staff Reporter
CAPITOLWIRE: — A national study released Monday ranked Pennsylvania’s school systems tenth-best nationwide, thanks, in part, to ranking twelfth in total public education spending per student.
The WalletHub study used 12 key metrics to rank each state and Washington D.C., including student/teacher ratios, test scores, drop out rates, bullying incidents and the percentage of population with at least a Bachelor’s Degree.
The point, says the study’s author Richie Bernardo, is to illustrate the correlation between education quality, income potential and the impact of both on each state’s economy.
“Unless one is destined to assume the ranks of wildly successful college dropouts like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, education remains the traditional route to financial success for many Americans,” Bernardo wrote. “Those with a bachelor’s degree earned 59 percent more than those with only a high school diploma, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure grows — and chances of unemployment shrink — as a worker’s educational attainment improves.”
Bernardo cautioned that while state education funding is “by no means a determinant of quality,” the Economic Policy Institute connects higher income to well-educated workforces, who can in turn “contribute more taxes to beef up state budgets over the long run.”
Bernardo cited per-pupil spending rates calculated by the National Education Association in a March 2014 report.
The U.S. Census Bureau released a “Public Education Finances” report in May, which calculated Pennsylvania’s per-pupil spending rate during the 2011-12 school year at $13,340 — including teacher salary and benefits — ranking it lower than nine northeastern states: New York ($19,522), New Jersey ($17,226), Connecticut ($16, 274), Vermont ($16,040), Massachusetts ($14,142), Rhode Island ($14,005), Delaware ($13,865), Maryland ($13,609) and New Hampshire ($13,593).
Public education spending encompasses about one third of Pennsylvania’s $29.4 billion budget, though state Democrats, unions and public education advocates alike say it’s not nearly enough to supplement the state’s school districts and ever-rising pension costs.
The issue of public education spending boiled over during budget negotiations last month when House lawmakers passed a bill at the 11th hour to allow Philadelphia city officials to increase the city’s cigarette tax. The $2-per-pack hike within city limits would funnel $83 million in estimated tax revenues to the school district – the largest in the state – to address its $81 million budget gap. The Senate added a five-year sunset provision into the bill’s language, as well as a few hotel tax levies for a handful of counties, and tossed the legislation back to the House for concurrence before recessing until mid-September.
The House canceled its session days for the week of Aug.4, when Capitol observers anticipated lawmakers would return to deal with the cigarette tax legislation so that Philadelphia School District could open on-time.
“This additional delay in authorizing a higher cigarette tax just for the city of Philadelphia is a huge disappointment because it could disrupt the school year of more than 200,000 children, as well as the work schedules of their parents and other caregivers,” said House Minority Leader Frank Dermody, D-Allegheny, in a July 31 press release. “Governor Corbett needs to work with state and city leaders to ensure that the state’s largest school district opens on time and stays open for the full school year. He appoints most of the commission that oversees Philadelphia public schools and he is ultimately responsible for what happens there.”
The governor on Wednesday promised during a press conference in Center City Philadelphia to infuse the district with $265 million – an advance on state money already earmarked for the city’s schools – before the first day of school, scheduled for September 8.
