Trying to make grade in Pa.

Education poses test for governor hopefuls

HARRISBURG (AP) — Candidates for Pennsylvania governor this year enjoy a wealth of big themes to explore, from integrity in government and the dysfunctional state-budget process to the looming pension-funding crisis and prison overcrowding.

In a large state with its share of challenges, however, no topic touches the lives of more residents than public education.

So far the candidates have tended to address the issue with generalities. Their Web sites contain many bland but optimistic-sounding statements about the importance of education and a commitment to meet those needs.

But the time to flesh out their ideas is rapidly approaching as the campaign begins to heat up.

Education spending consumes more than a third of Pennsylvania’s general-fund state budget, with state taxes covering $9.8 billion a year of what it takes to teach 1.8 million students from pre-kindergarten through high school.

Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts spend $24.3 billion annually, with a staggering 3,240 public schools that employ about 126,000 teachers.

Education policies were at the center of Gov. Ed Rendell’s two gubernatorial campaigns and have been a continuing priority of his administration. Even last year, as tax revenues dried up and a state budget deal proved frustratingly elusive, Rendell insisted on — and won — hundreds of millions of dollars in additional state funding for basic education.

Rendell said last week he hoped his successor would continue his momentum. He spoke of a need for further improvements in early childhood education, a more rigorous high school curriculum and more robust graduation standards.

“I don’t want to go back to the old ‘Well, money doesn’t matter,’” he told reporters. “Money going down the drain doesn’t matter. Money targeted to the educational programs we know produce results matters a great deal.”

On a political level, the subject of education is a tangle of policy questions and funding issues, and to stake out a position on any of them is to alienate someone. That is probably one reason that much of what the candidates have said so far has been vague.

The candidates might start by outlining what they would do about failing schools, incompetent teachers, district-by-district funding disparities, college affordability and dropout rates.

At the top of the list, says Tim Allwein, assistant executive director of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, should be a plan to help districts cope with the exploding cost of school-employee pensions.

“You’re looking at a lot of money,” he said. “So there needs to be both a short-term solution to handle the rate spike and a long-term solution.”

School directors will be trying to gauge the candidates’ commitment to improving student performance and addressing the practical challenges of running the state’s enormous educational system.

“I think the real difference is whether or not they’re going to make education a priority,” Allwein said.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, weighed in this week with a “Vision for the Future” that recommended smaller class sizes, longer hours of instruction, a larger role for parents and improved career and technical offerings.

The politicians who want to move into the governor’s residence next year might take a look back to early 2002, when Rendell was just where they are today.

He outlined a plan to legalize slot machines and tax cigarettes to shift more of the cost of education from local property taxes to the state. Rendell also said he would expand preschool and full-day kindergarten and talked about freeing school districts from paying cyber school costs unless the school boards chartered them.

In short, he offered specifics.