After reviewing this year’s state of public education (2018)
produced by PSBA, I have a few takeaways:
Introduction
·
90% of all school age children in PA are
enrolled in a public school.
·
The overwhelming challenge is funding.
·
Pension costs are the biggest reported source of
budget pressure.
·
The largest challenge for principals and
teachers is preparing for the standardized tests.
·
4 year graduation rates surpassed 88%.
·
PA has a large achievement gap between its
richest schools and highest poverty schools remains a challenge.
The public education landscape
·
Over 1.5M children were enrolled in school
districts for 2016-2017 (4% decrease over the last 5 years).
·
Rural schools make up 26.3% of public school
population.
·
Urban schools represent 20.7% of public school
population.
·
Suburban schools represent approximately 53% of
school aged population.
·
Rural school districts remain heavily white.
·
Urban school districts, students of color are a
plurality (black, multiracial, Hispanic).
·
Suburban schools are predominantly white.
·
CTCs are predominantly white.
·
Brick and mortar charter schools are
predominantly students of color (black, multiracial, Hispanic).
·
White enrollment in the state is decreasing.
·
Hispanic enrollment in the state is increasing.
Student Achievement
·
By 4th grade suburban students out
score rural and urban students in ELA, math, and science as measured by the
PSSA.
·
Rural schools score at the state average for 4th
grade PSSA.
·
Urban schools score at ½ of the state average
for the 4th grade PSSA.
·
4th grade is the transition from
learning to reading to reading to learn.
·
It is hard to move away from teaching to the
test when teachers and schools are evaluated based on the results.
·
Students tend to score at higher rates of
proficiency on the Keystone Exams as compared to the PSSA.
·
The state needs to figure out what they/we are
doing with the Keystone Exams and graduation.
·
Nearly 2/3 of principals were confident that at
least 80% of their graduates are ready for life after high school.
·
Over 77% of principals believe that critical
skills are most necessary for life after graduation.
Challenges
·
Chief school administrators rate budget
pressure/lack of funding as the primary challenge.
·
Everything costs more each year and the local
real estate revenue along with the state revenue does not come near covering
expenses so everything else is reduced, thus giving less to the students.
·
As the need and interest for more students to
complete career and technical programs, our sending districts’ financial
pictures are bleak. Therefore, this impacts our ability to grow or expand as
they cannot financially support expansions.
School Finances
·
The largest pressures on school budgets are
pension costs, charter school tuition payments, and special education costs.
·
To solve the problem of budget pressure schools
are drawing from fund balances or raising local real estate taxes.
·
The 2 largest areas of expenditure that were
cut; staffing levels and building/maintenance upgrades..
·
School districts receive $28.5B from the state
in 2015-2016 (3.3% increase over the previous year).
·
When compared to other states, Pennsylvania
ranks 47th out of 50 states for the state % of educational funding
and 3rd out of 50 states for the % of educational funding from local
sources.
·
In a nut shell, SE PA suburban school districts
are wealthy enough to pay for themselves. As one moves north and west, the
picture becomes more bleak with schools relying on the state for up to 80% of
total revenues.
·
Property taxes are the single largest source of
local revenue for school districts.
·
In 2015-2016 PA school districts collected
$12.6B in taxes accounting for 44.3% of total revenue.
·
For 2018-2019, 87% of the state is expected to
have a tax increase.
·
School Districts spent $28.3B in 2015-2016 which
was a 3.4% increase from 2014-2015.
·
58.8% of all expenditures were on instruction.
·
Since 2009-2010 pension costs have increased
434%.
·
Pension costs now consume more than 10% of all
school district spending.
·
More than 2/3 of brick and mortar charter
schools are located in urban areas.
·
6.8% of all school districts have NO fund
balance
Special Education
·
85% of special education students were educated
in the regular education classroom at least 40% of the time.
·
Over the last 5 years special education expenses
have outpaced state revenue increases by 7X.
·
90% of special education students receive
programming less than $25K per student per year.
·
1% of special education students receiving
programming in excess of $75K per student per year.
Transportation
·
Transportation constitutes 5% of spending.
·
Only 8.8% of districts provide their own
transportation.
Educational Equity
·
Poverty contributes to limited access to
technology at home, a lack of permanent housing, and struggling to keep food on
the table.
·
An estimated 328K PA children between ages 6-17
live in households below the federal poverty limit in acute poverty.
·
The achievement gap between the highest and
lowest poverty school districts is considerable.
·
School districts with the highest poverty do not
have the same level of revenue and expenditures as their lowest poverty peers.
·
33.5% of PA students are students of color
(black, multiracial, Hispanic).
·
5.5% of teachers are minorities.
Career and Technical Education
·
Over 80% of career and technical education
students are proficient on the NOCTI.
·
CTC directors believe that at least 90% of their
graduates were ready for the next steps in their educational or vocational
lives.
·
The biggest challenge in attracting students to
ctc programs is the perception of the school.
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