Andrew Lewis of the Commonwealth Foundation says Pennsylvania’s public education is “anything but adequate” (“Pa. public education is anything but adequate,” Aug. 23). On one point, we agree: Too many Pennsylvania kids still don’t have what they need to reach their full potential. But then Lewis takes a wrong turn, arguing we already spend too much and the fix is to route tax dollars into private-school vouchers with no strings attached.
That’s not a solution. It’s an excuse to abandon the work Pennsylvania has only just begun.
But merely looking at the total amount spent on education obscures the real problem. Pennsylvania ranks near the bottom nationally in the state’s share of school funding, forcing low-wealth communities to rely on local property taxes that don’t stretch far enough.
That’s exactly why, in 2023, the Commonwealth Court ruled our funding system unconstitutional — not because we spend too much, but because a child’s ZIP code still determines the quality of their education. It shouldn’t take a court case to move Harrisburg to do right by our kids. But it did.
Lewis disingenuously complains adequacy dollars are concentrated in a handful of districts by lumping a district with 200,000 kids in with a district with 1,000, and feigning shock that the larger districts get more funding on an absolute basis. And he does so despite suggesting (wrongly) the adequacy formula is not based on “how many students (districts) serve.” This fun with numbers obscures the reality: On a per-student amount, under the adequacy formula, small districts and big districts get treated exactly the same.
He also suggests eliminating hold harmless, the long-standing guarantee that no school district gets less state funding than it received the year before, even when its enrollment dips. This may sound good to Lewis’ Harrisburg think tank, but it would financially devastate school districts in places like Indiana, Washington and Allegheny counties.
All the while, he also claims the money isn’t working. But the adequacy supplement is barely three years old, and you can’t pin pandemic-era test scores and decades of underfunding on investments that only began in 2024. And the early results are already clear and tangible. For example, Chambersburg cut its counselor-to-student ratio nearly in half and saw a 40% drop in discipline incidents. Lehighton shrank class sizes and put a social worker in every building. Coatesville reopened five shuttered elementary libraries.
Districts reported exactly how every dollar was spent, the very accountability Lewis claims is missing.
Lewis claims to be standing up for students with disabilities, then he turns around and prescribes a federal voucher scheme that offers those very kids nothing. With vouchers, private schools have the “choice,” not families. They can, and do, turn away students with disabilities, and they have no legal obligation to serve them. The rights that protect a child with a disability are ones parents can actually rely on in the public schools.
Meanwhile, those private schools answer to no one: no transparency, no academic standards, no accountability. Funny how the accountability Lewis demands of public schools disappears the moment the money falls into private schools’ coffers.
Nine in 10 Pennsylvania kids attend public schools. Lawmakers in both parties made a promise to close the funding gap the court identified. Pennsylvania has begun to do that, and students are already benefiting.
Let’s not walk away from what’s working. Let’s finish that job.
Susan Spicka is executive director of Education Voters of PA.