Schools meet targets, but Corbett's aim is off

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

A little more than a week ago, the Pennsylvania Department of Education released the results of last spring's Pennsylvania System of School Assessments (PSSA) exams that are administered to more than 2.6 million students in this commonwealth.
Although we've never been a fan of standardized tests and the teaching-to-the-test approach that results, we are proud to say that local students performed well on those exams. In fact, overall as a state, students across Pennsylvania showed a marked improvement in 2011 over the test scores from the previous year. According to these tests which some folks think measure how well students, teachers and schools perform, the large majority of schools in the state are either doing well or moving in the right direction. Only a handful of the state's public schools (144 by the state's count), half of which are in Philadelphia, are consistently "failing" to meet testing targets.
With that fresh data available from the department of education, what did our governor announce last week? Instead of focusing on the job-killing poor condition of our state's roads and bridges this fall, he said his main focus will be on "education reform." For those who haven't followed our less-than-a-year-in-office governor through his public school funding slashing of this past spring and summer, "education reform" really means a push for school vouchers that will send public tax dollars to private schools.
And, since the governor has backed himself into a corner by promising not to raise taxes of any kind, that will mean even less funding for public schools as our tax dollars are funneled into the private sector.
Poll after poll has shown that most Pennsylvanians do not support the school voucher proposal, but that hasn't stopped Gov. Tom Corbett and many of the lawmakers in the state House and Senate. Taxpayers, rightfully so, have a hard time seeing the state abandon public schools in favor of private schools that lack the same level of accountability as their public counterparts. At the heart of the debate, most people do not want to see the school system that we've built and invested in for generations, dismantled willy-nilly when the evidence shows that the large majority of schools, teachers and students are meeting or exceeding our goals.
Thankfully, Corbett is the governor, not the dictator of Pennsylvania. Senators and representatives will have to pass the plan in order for it to be law; and that means they will have to answer to the voters in their communities. We urge local residents to contact their legislators to tell them how they feel about this voucher plan.
And we ask state Reps. Donna Oberlander and Sam Smith, and state Sens. Mary Jo White and Don White to have the courage to break ranks and to listen to a majority of their constituents who feel it is best to invest in a strong and accountable public education system, and not to siphon away funding that will not only hurt students today, but the future success of our state.
Instead of making this ill-conceived "education reform" his centerpiece this fall, Corbett should instead turn his full attention to infrastructure improvements and other measures to put people back to work for the good of us all.