Pennsylvania Is # 1 in Starving Its Poorest Schools

Jim Horn
School opens this year with many teachers knowing they will not get paid for September.  From a piece by Jeff Bryant for Salon:

Schools that serve communities that are so disproportionally poor are bound to be financially at risk in a system such as America’s where the financial base for schools starts with local property taxes. But the state of Pennsylvania compounds the problem by deliberately under-funding the schools in the state that are most in need of money.

As Rutgers University professor Bruce Baker explains on his blog, “the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has among the least equitable state school finance systems in the country,” giving less state and local revenue to the state’s highest needs schools like Chester Upland.

A national report released by the U.S. Department of Education earlier this year spotlighted the Quaker State as being among the worst of the 23 states across the country that distribute more education money to richer school districts and less money to those with the least means.

As The Post’s Emma Brown wrote when the report was released, “Pennsylvania’s state and local per-pupil spending in its poorest school districts is 33 percent lower than per-pupil spending in the state’s most affluent school districts, the highest differential in the country.” . . .