In a post-trial submission filed May 2, 2022, school districts, parents and statewide organizations who brought the case challenging Pennsylvania’s school funding system detailed the evidence they provided during the four-month trial, and what conclusions they believe Commonwealth Court should reach in the historic case.
Petitioners’ proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law reviews the extensive record from the Pennsylvania school funding trial, compiling key evidence from testimony in support of their case for adequate and equitable school funding.
Below, we’ve copied the introduction to the filing, which outlines the key points of our case.
Introduction to petitioners’ proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law
Appendices
(Emphasis added.)
1. The Education Clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution confers upon the General Assembly an unequivocal mandate: the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education. In its simplest terms, the General Assembly must provide a contemporary system of high-quality public schools in every corner of the Commonwealth. In the twenty-first century, the end point of such a system is clear: providing all children the resources necessary to graduate as capable, engaged citizens, ready to succeed in college and in family-sustaining careers.
2. The General Assembly has failed its duty, at a profound cost to the children of this Commonwealth, to students from low-wealth school districts, and to the school districts, organizations, and families that initiated this lawsuit seven years ago. And this failure does not only cause a violation of the Education Clause. Education is a fundamental right under the Pennsylvania Constitution. Under Pennsylvania’s Equal Protection provisions, the vast inequities that reign from district to district therefore must have a compelling justification. No legitimate justification exists at all.
3. Every material fact has been proven. That starts with the profound importance of education, a fact that was true in 1873: “The section on education is second in importance to no other section to be submitted to this Convention.” [Records of Pennsylvania’s 1872-74 Constitutional Convention]. And which is true today: “education is key to ensuring a vibrant future not only for our students, but for the Commonwealth as a whole.” [The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE)’s 2019 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan, submitted to the U.S. Department of Education]. The reason for that primacy is just as proven. Greater educational attainment results in greater civic participation, greater lifetime earnings, improved long-term health, and decreased rates of unemployment, reliance on public benefits, and crime.
Rather than live up to the constitutional mandate of a single high-quality system, the General Assembly has created two systems. One for those who can afford it, and one for those who cannot.
4. The promise of education is not confined to the privileged. It is a fundamental premise that every child can learn at high levels when given access to the right interventions and supports. This premise drives state education policy: “each student regardless of race, economic circumstance, ability, or zip code should be educated to the same high standards of achievement.” [PDE’s 2019 ESSA Plan]. And it was admitted by witness after witness after witness.
5. Also proven was another foundational tenet of education policy: some children need more assistance to share in those benefits. Specifically, children in poverty, children learning English, and children with disabilities will, on a general level, need additional resources if they are going to succeed at the levels of their classmates.
6. Those additional resources are nothing more than the basics of education: safe buildings, modern equipment, and sufficient numbers of the professionals who help children take advantage of educational opportunity, learn, and live up to their potential. And through the reports they have commissioned or authored, to the laws they have enacted, to the expert witnesses they have offered at trial, Respondents have admitted that those resources improve student outcomes.
7. Of course, modern buildings and professional staff cost money. That is why there is also near consensus on another foundational point: increased funding for schools increases academic outcomes. It is a fact echoed by Petitioners’ and Respondents’ experts alike, and it is supported by common sense: there are strategies that improve student success and funding directed towards those strategies improves student outcomes.
8. But the evidence is overwhelming that low-wealth school districts cannot afford those strategies. Instead, children learn in closets and hallways. Seventy-five small children share a single toilet. Libraries are closed. Teachers teach two or even three classes at the same time. And even when school districts can hire any teachers to close learning gaps, school leaders have to decide which children are privileged enough to receive that assistance, and which are not. In other words, rather than providing children what everyone agrees they need, school districts do something else entirely: triage them.
9. The state’s own data makes clear this approach has failed. In any given year, 320,000 of the 800,000 students sitting for state English assessments will fail to demonstrate proficiency. For math, that number climbs to 475,000. And these failures go beyond standardized tests. Year after year, only six out of ten Pennsylvania high school graduates enroll in college, while only four out of ten complete it.
10. The root of this failure stems from the General Assembly’s deliberate choices. Respondents readily admit what students should have, prescribe what subjects they should learn, mandate how often and in what manner they should be tested on those subjects, measure the relative need of each school district’s student body, and agree on what the end goal of public education should be: producing engaged, college and career ready citizens.
11. Yet year after year, Respondents decline to measure how much funding school districts need to accomplish state goals or whether local school districts can raise that funding in the first instance. The consequence of that decision is a system with insufficient resources, where those school districts who need the most have the least, despite trying the hardest.
12. As a result, the General Assembly’s failure is not spread evenly across Pennsylvania communities. Rather, by virtually every measure of success the state uses — from incoming assessments and standardized test scores, to high school graduation, college admission, and college graduation rates — students from low-wealth districts are being left behind. Yawning gaps in student success are evident in every state measure. None of this is in serious dispute.
13. Also proven is that the Commonwealth’s failures are particularly borne by those students who most often live in those low-wealth districts, and who often bear the brunt of society’s failure: poor children and children of color. By way of example, seventy percent of low-income students will fail to meet proficiency in math, while approximately eighty percent will not graduate college. Students learning English, Black students, and Latino students fare no better.
14. The Pennsylvania Department of Education readily admits that these massive learning gaps are caused by the conditions students experience at their schools. But those substandard learning conditions are so pervasive, and the resulting performance of those students has been so far below that of their white, non-poor peers for so long, that the Pennsylvania Department of Education does not believe it can even set equal end goals for all students. Instead, low-income children, Black children, and Latino children — in a best-case scenario — are expected to have massive achievement gaps long into the foreseeable future. The inequity feeds inequity.
15. Trial also proved that a different way is possible. Educational interventions can have longstanding impacts, and resources matter. Indeed, a low-income student from a high-wealth Pennsylvania district is more likely to be proficient on standardized assessments, to enter college, and even to graduate from college, as compared to a low-income student from a low-wealth district. The promise of education remains as strong as ever.
16. That is why over the course of fourteen weeks, no superintendent shied away from detailing his or her own successes, even in an environment that is depressing, and debilitating, and caused by a failure they have no fault in. For even amid the dysfunction of the Commonwealth, Petitioners’ staff and students remain resilient, making efforts to do more with less, from teachers working through unacceptable conditions or administrators covering multiple jobs, to students persisting, and to real, if too infrequent, success stories.
17. That success is blunted for one reason: Rather than live up to the constitutional mandate of a single high-quality system, the General Assembly has created two systems. One for those who can afford it, and one for those who cannot.
18. As was proven from the first witness to the last, with a raft of evidence that is barely in dispute: the Constitution demands more. The inadequacies and the inequities of state funding, and the deprivations and failures children suffer as a result, violate the Education Clause and Equal Protection provisions of the Pennsylvania Constitution.