Cruel hoax
Tuition plan would shortchange public schools
Funding for Pennsylvania’s low- and moderate-income public schools is about to be pillaged again by the Legislature.
Gov. Tom Corbett already has proposed a 10 percent across-the-board funding cut. Districts would also lose the charter-school reimbursement they receive from the state. These proposals would hit low- and moderate-income districts especially hard.
Republicans in the General Assembly want to get in on the kick-’em-when-they’re-down action. The state Senate is considering a bill that would provide tuition vouchers to children who want to attend private and religious schools. The Associated Press reported the bill eventually would create one of the nation’s biggest school-voucher programs, if not the biggest.
Republicans estimate the bill would cost more than $730 million in the first four years. However, Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, believes the bill would be more expensive than that, and he’s probably right. Politically, it benefits tuition backers to lowball costs.
You can bet your bottom dollar this $730 million (or more) won’t come via higher taxes or from other areas of state spending. It will be taken right out of funding for basic education, which, once again, would hit low- and moderate-income districts especially hard because they don’t have the local tax bases to make up for the loss of state revenue.
Other reasons to question this proposal are its constitutionality (see Article III, Section 15 of the state constitution) and its lack of accountability (students’ scores on standardized tests that are mandatory for public schools would not have to be reported to the state).
But the main reason to oppose this proposal is that it’s a cruel hoax being played on children and their families.
First, private and parochial schools would not be required to accept every child who applies. Schools could and would pick and choose their students.
Second, some children already in private and parochial schools could qualify for tuitions. (By the fourth year, families with incomes up to $67,000 a year would be eligible.) That would cut down on the number of classroom openings available to students who want to transfer out of public schools.
Beaver County Times