Peter Greene lives in Pennsylvania, where the previous governor, Tom Corbett, and the Republican-controlled Legislature did their best to encourage corporate reform and to destroy public education. Corbett welcomed for-profit cyber-charters and every other kind of charter, and he slashed the budget for public education. The result can be seen starkly in Philadelphia, where many public schools have been replaced by charters, and the remaining public schools are stripped of programs, resources, and services.
Here he explains that it is not just urban districts like Philadelphia and York that are being cut down by “reformers,” but not-very-wealthy rural districts like the one he teaches in. People blame their local school boards, but even the most fiscally responsible local boards are falling victim to decisions made by the legislature.
He writes:
The closing of schools is rampant in my part of PA, and we aren’t alone. We’re a region of not-very-wealthy rural districts, but not-very-wealthy urban districts like Philly and York have also cut schools like a machete in a bamboo forest.
It is not a matter of declining student population, and it is not a matter of districts falling on tough times. It’s a widespread financial crisis, and it’s manufactured.
How to manufacture a statewide financial crisis.
Cut state funding. This puts the making-up-the-difference pressure on local taxpayers.
Take a ton of money away from public schools and give it to charters.
Create a huge pension funding crisis. This is its own kind of challenge, but the quick explanation is this– pre-2008, invest in really awesome stuff, and when that all tanks and districts suddenly have huge payments to make up, tell the districts they can just wait till later and hope for magic financial fairies to fix it. It is now later, there are no fairies, and a small district with an $18 million budget is looking at pension payments that go up $500K every year.
Oh, and pass a law that says districts can’t raise taxes more than a smidge in any given year….
The end result?
School districts are looking down the barrel of million-plus-dollar deficits. The two deficits for which I have now been a power point audience can both be entirely explained by the formula:
Charter Payments + Pension Payments + Other Tiny Obscure Cuts = District Deficit
In other words, a district that had a fiscally responsible year last year, that didn’t do anything crazy or odd or unusual and just left everything alone when planning for this year– that district is still facing huge deficits in their current budgeting cycle, unrelated to any choices that they made in managing their own local district.
Funny, last time I looked, it was states that have the primary responsibility in their constitutions for maintaining a “thorough and efficiency” (or some variation thereof) system of public education. But the legislators are passing mandates that shift the burden to local districts and sitting by while public schools are closed.
Is this part of a plan to privatize public education? What do you think?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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I wish someone would do an analysis on the states that have cut K-12 funding but expanded pre-K funding. Are ed reformers just moving money around?
Something like 30 states have cut public school funding under federal and state ed reform leadership over the last decade and something like 30 states have “expanded” pre-k funding.
When politicians make the claim they are expending pre-k funding we need to look at total funding and see if they’re just taking it from K-12.
We need better information on where the money the ed reform “movement” is pulling out of K-12 schools is going. My working and middle class district has lost millions in funding under Obama/Kasich. My taxes haven’t gone down-in fact, my local school taxes went up because we had to replace some of the money we used to get from the state. Where did the funding go? It’s been re-allocated somewhere.
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Rahm is still spouting how Chicago now has universal kindergarten because he mandated it. He never mentions that he didn’t fund it. Principals had to decide what to cut out in order to meet his decree: Librarians (if they even had a library), nurses, art, music, teachers…
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I disagree wholeheartedly because both are to blame. I have witnessed too many times local board members go along with what is obviously wrong without even so much of a question. In my opinion local board members should all be required to have at least some experience as educators. In my former District most of the board members are nothing but aspiring politicians. One has already been indicted on federal corruption charges for shady insiders deals pertaining to the awarding of business contracts. Others sit quietly while the destruction of the school system advances at a rapid rate. There is way too much bureaucracy in the school system from board members to over paid paper pushing cronies all the way down to Union cronies who all claim to feel what teachers and students are going through. However, with the platform these individuals possess to speak up on a day to day basis about these issues you would expect more than the usual silence. They will never defend what is right because that would mean risking their cushy do nothing six figured salaried jobs and they aren’t going to do that anytime soon.
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Pick up the phone and start hounding, y’all:
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Thanks for posting. I agree, get your voice on record. And, if you are fortunate to have an assembly member who voted no, send a thank you, and remind them voters are paying attention.
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This is not a very good quick explanation of the pension issue in Pennsylvania. The big structural problems that Pennsylvania’s large pension systems face largely can be traced back 2000 or 2001, when the funds were “overfunded” due to the huge stock market increases in the late 90s, and that “overfunding” was used to justify big retroactive benefits enhancements. The pension systems fell into a hole and never got out.
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This is not a very good quick explanation of the pension issue in Pennsylvania. The big structural problems that Pennsylvania’s large pension systems face largely can be traced back 2000 or 2001, when the funds were “overfunded” due to the huge stock market increases in the late 90s, and that “overfunding” was used to justify big retroactive benefits enhancements. The pension systems fell into a hole and never got out.
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This is a national epidemic and no place is escaping. People need to start fighting to keep their public schools.
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Sometimes it’s governors and state legislatures who are to blame for doing harm to public education. Sometimes it’s the Feds. Sometimes – maybe most times – it’s both.
But sometimes local school boards are responsible. After all, they hire superintendents. And the superintendents often have an agenda. Sometimes that agenda is simply more of the nonsense dished out at state and federal levels. Sometimes the agenda is an area of personal interest, or one the superintendent plans to transform in a lucrative consulting gig when the superintendent days are done.
Look at Fairfax County, VA. It recently hires a superintendent who had previously led Houston’s “ASPIRE program, the school improvement effort that paid more than 18,000 teachers and instructional staff more than $70 million in performance bonuses over the last three years based on the academic improvement of children.” [That “academic improvement” was test scores.]
Houston’s ASPIRE program was developed through a “quick and relatively noncollaborative planning process” that was not transparent and that relied on “a complex formula” that teachers did not understand. Worse, teachers “were not allowed access to the data that formed the basis of their performance awards.” The ASPIRE merit pay plan was funded (in part) by the Broad, Gates and Dell foundations, some of the top supporters of corporate-style education “reform.”
Researchers and test experts have cautioned against the use of value-added models to evaluate teachers. They note that “value-add models of teacher effectiveness are highly unstable,” and that “Teachers’ value-added ratings are significantly affected by differences in the students who are assigned to them.” Testing expert Jim Popham says that the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers “runs counter to the most important commandment of educational testing — the need for sufficient validity evidence.”
But the Fairfax superintendent is on record saying that value-added models are “proven methodology” that are both “valid and reliable.” She has said that they offer up “increased accountability for schools, teachers and students,” that they can be used for “recognizing excellence,” for “informing practice,” and for “improving teaching and learning.” Apparently she knows something that the experts do not (wink).
When this superintendent was hired, the Fairfax school board chair said she wowed the board with “the things she has been able to achieve in various school districts, it’s her vision in leadership.” And a Republican board member said Garza’s arrival represents “the beginning of a sea change in Fairfax.” Perhaps. But what’s clear is that this is more of the same old goofiness.
Isn’t it quite clear who the culprit is for the hire? It isn’t the state legislature nor is it the Feds.
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