With all the many things to worry about this year – from the bad economy to wars abroad and partisan bickering over health care and social issues - one traditional election-year issue seems to be lost: education. But the fact is, the quality and cost of the education that our children receive affects everyone in one way or another.
There certainly is a lot to talk about. In this election season, schools are staggering under the weight of the bad economy. State funding is down more than $800 million in New Jersey. Funding may be up a little in Pennsylvania over the last few years, but lawmakers have used federal stimulus money to make up for state shortfalls - and there's no guarantee Washington will be sending any more money.
And just this week, Pennsylvania State Auditor General Jack Wagner said the state shouldn't allow any more charter schools, which are popular with both political parties, until it figures out a way to monitor how much they cost taxpayers.
Today, The Committee of Seventy takes a look at what’s at stake on Election Day for public education this year, as part of our collaborative Election 2010 project with Philly.com.
- Oct. 6, 2010
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What if I don’t have kids in school? Why should I care what candidates say about education?
Because you’re paying for the school system, even if you don’t have children or your kids are long grown up and gone. A big chunk of school funding comes from property taxes, and those are pretty high, particularly in New Jersey and the Philadelphia suburbs. The rest of the school budget comes from your state and federal tax dollars.
Why does the quality of schools matter anyway?
It’s a lot harder to attract jobs to the area if the schools are bad. If you don’t have an educated work force, companies don’t want to move to your town. And what new residents want to move into a community where the schools are dangerous or can’t keep kids in the building long enough to graduate? This has been a problem in struggling cities like Philadelphia and Camden.
What does the state have to do with all this?
An enormous amount. School districts in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey get a lot of money from local property taxes, but they also get a lot of state money as well. The most extreme example, the Philadelphia School District, got half of its $3.2 billion budget from the state government in one form or another this year. And the state effectively controls the city schools through the School Reform Commission, which replaced the locally-appointed board in 2001.
What does the federal government have to do with education?
Traditionally, public schools were mostly an issue for state and local governments. But in recent decades, the federal government has been paying more and exerting more control over what and how schools teach. President George W. Bush made improving student test scores a major national priority with his “No Child Left Behind” program, passed in 2001, and President Obama has tried to put his own stamp on the idea by having states compete for $1.35 billion in grants, awarded based on states meeting a series of goals related to improving student performance. That program is known as “Race to the Top.”
You said federal stimulus money has helped Pennsylvania schools balance the budget?
The federal government has provided close to $100 billion for school districts nationwide, including the Race to the Top grants (Delaware got one, Pennsylvania didn’t, and New Jersey famously missed a grant by just a few points on a 500-point scale thanks to a clerical error, prompting the governor to fire the head of education for the state). Although it didn’t get “Race to the Top” money, Pennsylvania got about $2.7 billion for education in the 2009 “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
Do the political parties disagree on how to approach education?
Yes, quite a bit in many areas, though they both say the ultimate goal is to prepare students better for work and college at a more reasonable cost. The lines aren’t as sharp as on some issues, so it’s harder to generalize, but Republicans tend to favor ideas that give parents more freedom to move out of dysfunctional public schools, like giving them the option of charter schools or school vouchers, while Democrats tend to favor ideas that put more resources directly into improving public schools. As we said, however, there is lots of crossover between the parties on these ideas, particularly on charter schools, which have a growing support among Democrats as well.
So what are “charter schools”?
This is an increasingly popular movement in recent decades, where a private group signs a contract (or “charter”) with the local school district to run a public school. The school is funded and supervised generally by the local district, but it is not bound by all of the work rules and requirements of a traditional public school. This has been a popular program in Philadelphia, where the school system has been notoriously dysfunctional and hard to reform. About 31,000 Philadelphia students attend 71 charter schools.
So support for charter schools will increase no matter who wins?
Probably. All kinds of people, including President Obama, support charter schools. Some early advocates, however, fear that the initial mission of the schools - to be laboratories for experimental practices in curriculum and school management that the regular public schools could adopt later - has been forgotten and charter schools have mutated into what amounts to an alternative to the regular education system.
Do charter schools work?
There is a lot of disagreement about that. Parents with kids in Philadelphia charter schools almost universally love them, according to polls. But a 2009 Stanford University study of 16 states (not including Pennsylvania, though) found that almost half of charter schools were no better than the nearby public schools, and another third were worse. That pattern seems to follow in Philadelphia, where many of the best schools are charters, but there have also been widespread reports of charter schools that are poorly run and kept alive through connections with powerful politicians. State Auditor General Jack Wagner said this week that Pennsylvania should halt expansion of charter schools until it can figure out a way to supervise them better.
What was wrong with the bad charter schools?
School District officials in Philadelphia admit they made a mistake in the early years by approving too many schools without proper oversight. Since then, two charter schools have shut down and others have come under investigation from the City Controller and federal officials after allegations of fraud and improper conduct. Both candidates for governor have promised to tighten controls of charter schools. The Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board
said this week that supervision of charters should be handled by the state, not local districts.
What are the “school vouchers” you mentioned?
The idea is that parents could take the tax money the local school district would normally spend on their children and apply that to tuition at a private or religious school. The argument is that if the local school district is ineffective or dangerous, parents shouldn’t have to pay twice – once for the failing public system they can’t let their kids attend and then again for tuition to a private school. Critics, however, say the idea is a Catch-22: it takes away money the public schools could use to improve, making it even harder to fix the system.
Is anyone calling for vouchers in this election?
Yes, and here’s where the political lines get fuzzy again. Republican Tom Corbett says if he were elected governor, he would favor vouchers to allow parents to escape the “monopoly” of the public schools. Democratic rival Dan Onorato says vouchers just hurt the school systems that need the money most, though he has cautiously embraced a limited voucher program for low-income families.
How does education play in the Congressional races?
This hasn’t been a major issue in the races so far (people are overwhelmingly worried about the economy, polls show, and not all local candidates even mention education on their campaign websites). The Republicans’ “Pledge to America,” the document outlining what the party would do if it regains control of Congress, doesn’t talk about education. But clearly their pledge to cut at least $100 billion from the federal budget might cause some decrease in public education funding. Democrats have not put out an equivalent unified position paper, but to the extent local candidates talk about it all, they call for maintaining funding for public schools.
What about in the gubernatorial race?
Education has been a much bigger issue for the men who are running for governor, probably because the state has such a large role in funding and setting standards for schools. In addition to supporting vouchers, Corbett has called for greater local control of schools and tying teacher pay to the performance of students. Onorato has promised to keep state funding levels high, send more money to local schools to fund the expensive “special education” programs for students with disabilities, and to maintain tax credits for businesses to fund private school scholarship programs for low-income students (which Corbett supports too).
What will happen to Philadelphia’s struggling schools under a new governor?
That’s hard to say. Gov. Ed Rendell, who used to be mayor of Philadelphia, has been generous to education both statewide and in the city over his eight years in office. He’s even managed to keep funding levels up despite the state’s ongoing budget crisis caused by the weak economy. In order to do that, however, he’s had to rely on federal stimulus money to make up for state shortfalls. The next governor, whoever he is, may have a hard time keeping that up.
How can I find out more about what candidates are saying?
You can check out our partners at Philly.com
to see what each candidate is saying. We also have
direct links to websites of the candidates.
This is the third in a series of issue-oriented “In the Know” pieces developed for “Election 2010,” a joint project of Philly.com and the Committee of Seventy. We welcome your thoughts on this or any other “In the Know” project at info@seventy.org.