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PA.'s Tragic Betrayal of Its Public Schools (by a retired school superintendent)
Last edited Wed Jun 19, 2013, 10:06 PM - Edit history (4)
http://dianeravitch.net/2013/06/18/how-pennsylvania-betrayed-its-schools/Excerpt:
"...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. "