Wednesday, May 16, 2018

State of Education in PA 2018



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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