This commentary was written by a retired superintendent of schools.
Pennsylvania’s Tragic Betrayal of its Public Schools
By Joseph Batory, Former Superintendent of Schools, Upper Darby School District, Drexel Hill, PA
With regard to the inadequate funding of Philadelphia Public Schools, the city’s politicians have been and continue to lacking in political courage and moral fiber. Far too many of them are much too self-serving and most of them do not even understand what the fiscal insanity that continues to cripple the schools and the children of their city.
Likewise, the recent array of superintendents has each been far too meek and without the commitment to confront the system’s financial deficiencies.
But the worst villain of all has been the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In the early 1990’s, Pennsylvania government consciously destroyed its Equalized Subsidy for Basic Education (ESBE) formula. That method of State funding once used to bridge the wide gaps between poorer and more affluent school districts. The ESBE formula each year had utilized factors of community wealth and pupil population to drive out annual subsidies to school systems that were both objective and fair. Unfortunately, the growing costs of this ESBE formula to the state budget caused its ultimate demise as cowardly politicians prioritized re-election agendas instead of the common good.
Since the removal of the ESBE formula by the Pennsylvania legislature, billions of dollars have been denied to school districts across the Commonwealth.
When the ESBE formula was dropped, many impoverished school systems received only a fraction of what the ESBE formula would have generated. Without a funding formula, this has gone on year after year. This has created havoc at the local level.
State politicians have also violated the Pennsylvania Constitution which mandates that the Commonwealth “maintain and support a thorough and efficient system of public education” and they’ve been in denial for many years like they had no part in this incompetency.
Over the years, there have been numerous and diverse education coalitions across Pennsylvania that rose up against the betrayal of schools and children by a bipartisan political establishment without conscience.
Tragically, unlike many other states nationally, Pennsylvania courts—whether as a matter of political control or apathy— have consistently dismissed challenges to the Commonwealth’s obvious inadequate funding of schools. Almost all states pay a larger percentage of overall public education costs than Pennsylvania. The Commonwealth’s approximate rank is 45 out of 50 in the nation on this measure. On average, other states contribute 47% of total education funding, but in 2006 (sadly…the most recent statistics available), Pennsylvania contributed only 36% (National Center for Education Statistics) as its share of public education funding statewide. To counter this reality, Harrisburg’s political “spin doctors” work overtime to obfuscate the issues, assassinate dissenters and confuse the public.
The last Philadelphia superintendent who tried to fight for the rights of the city’s children was David Hornbeck. He publicly decried the State’s lack of any adequate financial commitment to its public schools. For daring to do this, he was politically executed and run out of office. Small wonder that his superintendent successors just ran with whatever funds the political establishment granted them rather than advocating the educational needs of school children.
As a superintendent of schools during the 1990’s in nearby Upper Darby, I also fought with State politicians of both parties daring to suggest publicly that they were ignoring their Constitutional responsibility and hurting the neediest schools and children via insufficient school funding. Most of these politicians denied any funding inadequacies regularly telling constituents that school districts like Philadelphia and my District in Upper Darby had plenty of money.
Ironically, on November 15, 2007, The Philadelphia Inquirer, published a page one independent report from the GoodSchoolsPa organization validating the terrible betrayal of Pennsylvania’s public schools and the children they serve for a long period of years by its state politicians.
Here are some of the findings of that study : Pennsylvania was currently underfunding public education by $4.8 billion. And Pennsylvania ranked 45th among the 50 states in the percentage of school funding that comes from the State. This analysis noted that to correct the situation by equalizing what is spent for each student in Pennsylvania and allowing the state’s poorer public schools to just “catch up” to the statewide adequate cost per pupil, many school districts in Pennsylvania were entitled to money. In that context, Philadelphia’s public schools were owed $1 billion from the state and Upper Darby (my old school district) was entitled to $54 million.
Hard to believe things could get any worse. But now we have the tyrannical reign of Governor Tom Corbett. The Harrisburg political buzzword of “fiscal responsibility” is an absurd concept in the context of the education our young people. Money has always mattered in business and industry and government whenever America has been serious about anything! Saving a dollar now on underfunding schools in Pennsylvania will very likely result in spending exponentially more dollars in the future when a more undereducated population is contributing less to the economy and/or filling up the prisons. Governor Corbett’s theoretically conservative policy can be more accurately described as fiscal irresponsibility.
The Commonwealth’s political betrayal of public schools is a national disgrace. It is a legacy of infamy!
All this just to get rid of the union.
Not just that, Bill. Corbett and cronies are also profiting from investments in charter schools and, as someone else mentioned, for-profit prisons.3 birds with one stone. Scarily, brilliantly evil.
“Small wonder that his superintendent successors just ran with whatever funds the political establishment granted them rather than advocating the educational needs of school children.”
Exactly what has happened in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Public School Superintendent, Dr. Lane, will not advocate for more funding from the State. Her administration has even publicly stated that grassroots efforts are futile because more state funding will not solve our budget problem. Our real problem, they say, is our abundance of expensive (and ineffective) teachers. The School Board is silent too.
Thanks to Mr. Batory for continuing to speak out.
Yes, and bringing in the new state education secretary won’t help.
All these posts about Philadelphia lately make me wonder where are the stories about Detroit. Over the last week it’s become almost certain that Detroit will declare bankruptcy. A huge and awful story.
FLERP,
Michigan does have a system where tax dollars are redistributed evenly (with a few exceptions) to the schools. That may be one reason you aren’t hearing so much about Detroit in the same way you are hearing about Pennsylvania.
But without getting into a historical dissertation on the evolution of Detroit, I can personally attest that Detroit has been on a downward trajectory for many, many years well before our current economic hard times. When I was in college in the 80s, you dared not venture much outside Greek Town and thereabouts.
Most of the beneficiaries of the auto industry moved to the suburbs and basically rebuilt all of the infrastructure in these communities that they would have visited the downtown for. Few people, especially those with any real economic power, lived in Detroit. That kills most cities.
I was thinking more about the path to bankruptcy, generally, than state aid formulas.
I’ve spent a fair anount of time in and around Detroit and I’ve followed it from afar too. It’s a special place for me for my own reasons. I find it difficult to articulate my feelings about what’s happened and what’s happening.
It is a hard thing to grasp. I think Detroit was written off a long time ago; kind of like Benton Harbor. My dad used to tell me stories about how wonderful Benton Harbor used to be – even better than St. Joseph. It was hard to imagine when you saw all the boarded up and dilapidated buildings.
Benton Harbor, though still a shell of what it once was, is clawing back. But it is not because the people who were left to live there have had their lives made any better. It is because people with money and/or fierce determination have started to take an interest. It’s a double-edged sword. My daughter takes violin lessons in Benton Harbor in an old building that was purchased by a group and renovated to devote to the Arts. It is now in what is called the “Arts District”. This is a way for people to discreetly let others know that it is “safe” for them to go there.
What is really sad is that the formula for the poor is incorporated into Michigan’s For Profit Prison System. The manufacturing is lucrative with cheap labor which comes from the societal formula of the social engineers for the castfoff’s of primarily the city. Michigan has been adept at this for decades and it as well as other states have the audacity to think that prisons are another source of learning (of course freedom has no part in this). We have become a warped society to even come this type of thinking and worse act on it. A formula for failure for a push through drop out or gave up child that goes to a JD status, then to jail, and then a graduate of our institutions of different learning, the prison. The urban shrinkage plan for Detroit is much like that of the German urban shrinkage model. But first, you have to impoverish the impoverished to the point of extreme urban blight, torching the properties (new film blames it on the already victimized..who may well be paid for “clearing” the properties…who knows!), starve the residence with no businesses, no jobs, no food stores, no hope, not much of anything. But expected to some how survive and be civil. The desperation of the cities, almost all large and minority residing citiess, is not a random
circumstance or being but more, so much more.Michigan is a gorgeous state that has taken a really sorry turn. But the wealthy will return to the cities, and in the not too distant future.
Philadelphia’s revenue/student this year is about $11,600. Not much on the East Coast but not so low as to make all the pink slips they are saying are going to happen. This is planned destruction. This sounds like a case of a state constitutional requirement not being kept. Is this a result of the State Supreme Court being also in their hands as obviously the politicians are?
Are they including charter school students as part of that funding? If so, even less is getting to the “public”, public schools.
No one should dismiss what George has just opened up in his always on the money remarks. The courts have a place in this travesty as well. These last thirty plus years have been capitalized by corporate on one end, undercapitalized by government on the other end, stripped and supported through some legal initiatives, ignored for self interest by the unions and administrators, denial of what was obviously swirling around them by teachers and parents (along with blind faith that they were being told the truth by those above them), denial by school boards in their place in this,with the ultimate manipulation and suffering of children!!!! Shame on all!!! DO NO HARM WAS THROWN OUT WITH THE BABY AND THE BATHWATER!!!!
FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!! OR GIVE ME THE MONEY!!!! OR I WANT MINES!!!!! You get the point!!! Every line of this article has a sad refrain and lament in it. However, the truth of what happened to Hornbeck and others is so, That this and many superintendents began to catch on that they were, with all their good intentions and trying to combat the futility of their roles, had little to no backup coming from anywhere. Most school boards are politically motivated, or individually politically tapped on, only as good as their integrity and conscious, leadership, along with the hopefulness that they are being given honest information to work with, supported by community which is usually a no win (you can’t make anyone happy), and had no idea what was about to hit them from behind.
The die had already brilliantly been cast by Technology Corporations, Government and the Military Defense Complex. This included the dismantling of financial, education, military, government, land and environment interests, and also included urban shrinkage plans. All a party to each other and all of the planners believing themselves to be in the best interests of all when it was as self-serving as any diabolical plan good every have been conceived!!!
This is a universal reshaping and retooling of global proportions.The corporate and techno-advanced years were bearing down on everything and every system of what we have known or relied on with regard to government and an American ideal. This did not include the true involvement or respect of the public or their needs or futures, just the pilfering of their money. Children are the future, true, but it is not the children’s future that is of primary interest or concern. They are only to be sorted into the reshaping as the needed workers on all levels of interest for the designing parties. The rest will be castoffs with little to nothing to sustain them.
Too many professionals and others waited until they were on safe turf and in comfort zones before a word was said and only after the courage of people like Diane Ravitch opened up the flowgates of the forgotten to the last days of public conversation through this blog. This may never happen again. Better late then never, but this late may well be over the time of saving the children. Continue to speak out until the duck tape comes in the form of shutting down our vehicles of communication.
Newspapers are dying, radio is dying, we have controlled televison,
and the internet is very soon to be smacked hard. Free speech is truly not free on many levels….excercise it now and massively!!!!
Free will lies within us and that may be the saving grace of this whole sorted mess!!!! The unintended consequence of repression and disrespect….the greatest motivators next to protecting the innocent children who are the targets of all this.