Education
2025 State of Education Spending in Pennsylvania
Overview The national trends impacting education in Pennsylvania in 2025 include an impending fiscal cliff, under-enrolled schools, and population decline, all of which lead to school closures…
Read More: 2025 State of Education Spending in PennsylvaniaPennsylvania’s future is in the hands of the next generation. Parents and students—not activist agendas—should drive the Commonwealth’s education policy. While policymakers have been entrusted with ensuring the next generation receives a quality education, parents should be empowered to choose the quality education that meets their unique child’s needs. Charter schools and tax credit scholarships are integral pieces of school choice, but more reforms are needed to make school choice a reality for all Pennsylvania students.
Education
Kids 5 Times as Likely to Suffer Violence at Pa.’s Worst Schools
Pennsylvania’s worst schools don’t just compromise our children’s education and future success – they compromise our children’s safety. Kids attending Pennsylvania’s worst academically performing public schools are more than…
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Research Finds Pa. Kids 5-times as Likely to Suffer Violence at Academically Failing Schools
Children attending Pennsylvania’s worst academically performing public schools are more than 5-times as likely to fall victim to acts of violent crime according to research released today by the…
Press Release
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2 Minutes Can Save Children
Meet Willie and Penny, two typical school students in Pennsylvania. Willie is a student from Philadelphia who attends one of the state’s worst violent, failing schools, where students are…
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How Much Would School Choice Proposal Save?
Reports from under the Capitol dome suggest an expansion of Pennsylvania’s successful Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) will be part…
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Opportunity Scholarships for Pennsylvania
A new proposal (HB 2468) would expand the existing EITC program while adding an additional category of scholarship organizations. Under HB 2468, the EITC limit would increase from $75 million…
Fact Sheet
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Attack on Charter Schools Shoddy and Misguided
School districts across Pennsylvania are in a budget crunch, due to a combination of overspending, ballooning pension costs and a loss of $1 billion in federal stimulus…
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Spending Crisis Forces Mom to Surrender Child
If lawmakers were in any doubt about how dire Pennsylvania’s education crisis has become, they need only look to Harrisburg mother Taisha Bartow and her 5-year-old daughter, Alayaisha.
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Lawmakers & Businesses Can Rescue Students Now
If lawmakers were in any doubt about how dire Pennsylvania's education crisis has become, they need only look to Harrisburg mother Taisha Bartow and her 5-year-old daughter, Alayaisha.
Commentary
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Who is to Blame for Schools’ Fiscal Woes?
Many advocates of more tax dollars for education blame Gov. Corbett and “cuts” for budgetary woes in Philadelphia and Reading school districts. But these complaints belie the facts. Over last…
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What’s in the Property Tax Elimination Bill?
This week, the House Finance Committee tabled HB 1776 until the fall to have further discussion. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Jim Cox, would eliminate school property taxes and…
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Compromise Would Save Kids, Taxpayers
Politics is the art of compromise, they say. When you have to get at least 102 out of the 203 members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to agree on…
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Why Public Opinion is Turning on Teachers’ Unions
Gil Spencer of the Delaware County Times penned a perceptive column yesterday on the waning popularity of teachers’ unions—and how an angry public is wising up to the unions’…
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Readers Ask, We Answer: Education Spending
A reader asked us to help clarify the claims of Yinzercation blog on state education subsidies. The blogger claims the Corbett administration is being disingenuous about state K-12 education…
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When Districts Choose, Kids Lose
What if you were awaiting a letter to find out where local officials were going to send your child to school next year? What if one of the possibilities was…
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$27B + $15K = What?
The Pennsylvania Department of Education recently released school financial data for the 2010-11 school year. The latest data shows public school spending and revenue increased yet again in 2011,…
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School Choice Toolkit
Children at Pennsylvania’s worst-performing schools are frequently subjected to acts of violence. In the worst 140+ schools alone, with some 80,000 children, students faced nearly 10,000 acts of violence in…
Fact Sheet
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Save Our Schools or Save Our Kids?
Throngs of anti-parental choice supporters have rallied in Philadelphia today, demanding more taxpayer dollars for their cause. According to Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Kristen Graham via her Twitter feed @newskag,…
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Why Families Like Cyber and Charter Schools
Nine-year-old Ashley Matunis and her sister, 6-year-old Anna (pictured right), are typical girls who enjoy pizza and pretzels. They are also typical of the kind of students who attend cyber…
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How to Fix What’s Broke in Education
Harrisburg Patriot-News columnist Nancy Eshelman rightly sounded the alarm Sunday on Pennsylvania’s public education system: It’s the same old story. Every spring, threats of higher taxes, slashed programs…
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Cal U Waste Begs for Higher Ed Reform
The Senate’s budget included more funding for state universities than Governor Corbett proposed, but new discoveries of wasteful spending should give lawmakers pause. Gov. Corbett proposed a 30 percent cut…
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Chart: School District Fund Balances Nearly Tripled in 14 Years
PA Independent reported on Monday that Pennsylvania school districts’ fund balances reached $3.2 billion in 2011 (they compiled the data from the PA Department of Education’s (PDE)…
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