Morning Call – August 10, 2005

Jim Scanlon, Bob Kish, Francis Barnes, School Funding Magic Wand

Dear Friends,

Good morning. A few weeks ago, I wrote that Quakertown school superintendent Jim Scanlon would make an excellent replacement for Francis Barnes, the Palisades School Superintendent who became Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Education. Barnes quit his state post and returns to Palisades on September 6. Incidentally, Scanlon’s father was Secretary of Education about 30 years ago.

I asked [Jim] Scanlon what he would do to insure that every child in Pennsylvania received a quality education…and if he had a magic wand, how would he pay for it? I expanded the idea to include Bob Kish, the superintendent of Pennridge schools, and Barnes.

Barnes couldn’t comment on my two questions while Secretary of Education. So I’ll have to wait until he becomes an ex state official. By the way, Barnes has put 35,000 miles on his car while commuting from Palisades to the capital.

“First, you’d have to develop a base line to educate each pupil,” Scanlon began. “In Pennsylvania, the cost per student averages $8,200. In Quakertown, it’s $13,700. But Quakertown [schools] receive only 23 percent state funding. Local taxes make up the difference…about 77 percent.

“The property tax is outdated,” he continued. “The only benefit of the property tax is that it’s local and the tax dollars stay local. Education funding based on income would be fairer.

“Governor Rendell says that there’s no equality for Pennsylvania students,” Scanlon added. Does the quality of education depend upon the school’s zip code? Probably. To make his point on fairness, Scanlon said Delaware funds 75 percent of the education cost…local property taxes make up the difference.

Kish had a different take. “One size doesn’t fit all,” he began. “You can’t come up with a dollar number for each student until you know what an effective education is. If I had a magic wand, I’d require the state to provide funding based on each school district’s wealth. First, you need to identify the educational opportunity each child should receive.

“Presently, the state provides only 11 percent of Pennridge’s funds…so 89 percent comes from local sources like the property tax,” Kish said. “The bottom line is that Pennsylvania’s system produces an adversarial relationship between property owners and the schools.

“But I wouldn’t want Harrisburg to funnel the money to Pennridge via a state school tax” he observed. “You won’t get more money from the state without more regulation. Frankly, I’d rather have benevolent neglect. No, I wouldn’t do away with the property tax, entirely.”

Kish thinks that America’s biggest educational crisis is the plight of urban schools. “It’s a problem that hasn’t been solved,” he said.

Scanlon fears that the federal mandate, No Child Left Behind, will put American schools behind the eight ball. “High expectations are fine,” he said, “but failure is inevitable for all schools [meeting the rising NCLB standards, annually].”

Here’s the conundrum. While the U.S. leads the industrialized world in public education investment, American students lag far behind their Asian and European peers. Teachers’ unions claim America spends too much on administration and not enough on salaries. There’s another side of the argument. The New York Times reported (July 31) that the National Council on Teacher Quality says that the brightest high school students don’t choose a teaching career. Worse, a 2003 study by the national Commission on Teaching and America’s Future claims that 46 percent of teachers leave the profession by the fifth year.

Finger pointing isn’t the solution. Meanwhile America’s students suffer.

Sincerely,

Charles Meredith