\Policy Corner\

Policy Corner

Penn GSE experts on the educational headlines of the moment

by Rebecca Raber

The Headline

Commonwealth Court Rules Pennsylvania’s School Funding System Unconstitutional

The Story

A lawsuit was filed in 2014 by six school districts, four parents and their children, the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools, and the NAACP-Pennsylvania State Conference claiming that the state wasn’t investing enough in its public education system, particularly in its lower-wealth districts, and, therefore, was not meeting its constitutional duty.

This past February, Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer agreed, ruling that the petitioners had demonstrated “manifest deficiencies between low-wealth districts . . . and their more affluent counterparts.” To comply with its state constitution, she said, Pennsylvania must ensure “that every student receives a meaningful opportunity to succeed academically, socially, and civically, which requires that all students have access to a comprehensive, effective, and contemporary system of public education.”

That currently is not happening because Pennsylvania public schools only receive about a third of their funding from the Commonwealth, while the majority of a district’s funding comes from local property taxes. This creates fundamental inequality based on the wealth of a local community.

The expert

Ericka Weathers, assistant professor in Penn GSE’s Policy, Organizations, Leadership, and Systems division, studies the causes and consequences of inequality in K–12 education and the effects of K–12 policies on student and school outcomes.

Pictured: Ericka Weathers; Photo credit: Joe McFetridge for Penn GSE

HER TAKE

“Pennsylvania had a funding formula that was insufficiently funding schools, but in 2016 the state implemented the Fair Funding Formula, which was designed to more equitably distribute state aid to school districts,” said Weathers. “It was an attempt to be more ‘fair,’ but it came with a ‘hold-harmless’ [or grandfather] provision that made sure that every school district would receive at least the same amount of state aid prior to the implementation of the Fair Funding Formula, regardless of the current student or district needs. . . That resulted in less than 10 percent of the new state aid going to this new funding formula, which kept the system inequitable, and the school districts that were negatively impacted by the provision were disproportionately Black and Latinx.”

For example, according to a table by independent newsroom Spotlight PA based on House Appropriations Committee analysis of 2018–2019 data, if all money went through the Fair Funding Formula, the School District of Philadelphia’s funding would increase by 31 percent and Central York School District’s would increase by a whopping 108 percent.

“Resources matter,” said Weathers. “And the reason why this court case matters is because it’s saying now that the state of Pennsylvania is on the hook for providing more sufficient resources in an equitable way, particularly for students and districts who need it most.”

Specifically, it is the state legislature and new governor, Josh Shapiro, who must come up with this new equitable funding formula for Pennsylvania’s school districts. What form this will take—and how long it will take to be implemented—remains to be seen.

Weathers, for her part, would advocate for a new formula that weights for factors such as poverty, district size, and proportion of students who need support services such as special education and English language learning. She also noted that her research has found a relationship between school segregation and school funding—“it’s not saying that segregation causes funding disparities, but it says that segregation is related to these funding disparities”—and she would like to see budgetary attention paid to the issue.

“Compensatory funding for poverty is not enough to make sure that Black students and Latinx students are getting what they need to thrive,” she said. “My argument would be a consideration of a racial segregation funding weight . . . Let’s not ignore race. The literature tells us that racism and discrimination are dynamic and regenerative. And I think we need to account for that when we’re thinking about policies to address racial inequality.”

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