Power and Politics in Pennsylvania’s Court-Ordered School Finance Reform

• In Event: Power as Resource, Tool, and Constraint: Examining Power in Educational Organizations

Abstract

Court-ordered school finance reforms (SFRs) can play an important role in creating more robust, adequate, and equitable education funding systems (Candelaria, McNeill, & Shores, 2022). However, the responsibility of adhering to these rulings lies in the hands of state legislatures, giving them expansive power to shape educational outcomes through funding allocation. We seek to better understand the pathway from court order to finance reform by studying how state legislators think about and act on SFR rulings. Our study uses the case of Pennsylvania to consider 1) how funding provisions change after a ruling, 2) which districts tend to benefit from SFR and why, and 3) how political concerns mediate resulting funding allocations.

In 2023, Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court issued a landmark ruling finding the state’s education funding formula unconstitutional. Pennsylvania’s school finance system has led to some of the most pronounced funding inequities in the nation; however, it is one of the higher- spending states in the country, meaning it has ample funds to reallocate in service of funding and resource equity (Blagg, Gutierrez, & Terrones, 2022; Farrie & Sciarra, 2022).

In this case study, we use document analysis and interviews to explore the political and power dynamics involved in implementing Pennsylvania’s SFR. Our document analysis includes more than 43 pieces of media from newspapers and radio stations that discuss the Pennsylvania State Assembly’s response to this ruling. We reviewed these documents with an eye toward the issues politicians consider when undertaking a major revision to education funding and how these issues interact with partisan objectives. Also, we conducted interviews with 14 key actors and stakeholders about education budget negotiations. We sought to elicit participants’ views on the court order, priorities for funding allocation under the court order, changes in their views and expectations during litigation and legislative negotiations, and considerations of partisan objectives. Interviewees included policymakers and staffers in the General Assembly, members of the Basic Education Funding Commission, and superintendents.

Our analysis of traditional media reveals distinct partisan framing around Pennsylvania’s court-ordered school funding reform. Democratic legislators cited values of equity and fair opportunity while Republican legislators cited concerns about whether additional funding would yield commensurate results and expressed ideological opposition to certain provisions raised during negotiations. For instance, some Republicans framed provisions such as free feminine hygiene products in schools as overreach. Our interviews found that policymakers were cautiously optimistic that bipartisan support for funding increases would continue. One state representative and former school board member described that their initial relief at the court’s decision quickly shifted to focus on the potential challenges of implementing the seven-year plan. These findings suggest that while there is broad support for reform, ideological differences will shape how Pennsylvania SFR moves forward.

We show some of the ways that school funding negotiations are shaped by legislators’ ideological and party positions, and how tenuous consensus can be given changing political priorities. These findings shed light on ways that power and politics shape education finance reform.

Authors

• Joshua Bleiberg, University of Pittsburgh

• Nell Williams, EdFund

• Ai Shao, University of Pittsburgh