Do Poorest School Districts Have to Take the Biggest Cuts? (PA. Budget; Plus New Charter Sch. Study)

[JPZenger]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PA_VIEWING_HARRISBURG_PAOL-?SITE=PASCR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Article written by an AP reporter looks at the fairness of billion dollar cuts planned to public schools in Pennsylvania by the Republican Governor and the two Republican controlled houses of the state legislature. They know that most city residents don't vote Republican.

Excerpts:

"When Gov. Tom Corbett chose to cut Pennsylvania's way out of a projected multibillion-dollar budget deficit, he started by taking a disproportionate chunk of state aid away from the state's poorest school districts. Why not approach it by taking a disproportionate amount of state aid away from the districts that can best afford it - the wealthiest?

... Buckheit and others suggest that it would be fairer to ask school districts to absorb a uniform per-student reduction in state aid, rather than the wild disparity in per-student reductions that resulted from the budget plan Corbett proposed in March.

...Poorer school districts typically get a larger portion of their budgets from the state than wealthier districts based on a formula developed by the Legislature that determines how the money is divided among school districts, The formula is designed to help districts that simply cannot raise as much from local taxes and that have higher poverty rates.

But the distribution of money also must meet the political test of legislative approval. That means that some school districts get more money than they otherwise would under the formula - a total of nearly $400 million extra over the past decade that the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Education Law Center of Pennsylvania says would have gone to poorer or needier districts"

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Much more on this topic in various posts at the PA. section of DU.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=175
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By the way, a new Stanford University study was issued recently that shows that few PA. charter schools are doing better than public schools. In fact, the cyber charter schools are doing much worse than public schools, even though they receive as much public funding per student as bricks and mortar schools. No surprise there.

http://articles.mcall.com/2011-06-12/news/mc-stanford-pennsylvania-charter-scho20110612_1_public-charter-schools-research-on-education-outcomes-school-choice-advocates