Nov 12, 2014 4 min read

Does anyone really believe students in places like, say, Duquesne are getting the same quality of education as kids in leafy suburbs like Peters Township or Fox Chapel?

Of course not, and that’s essentially the basis for a lawsuit filed Monday against the state, accusing commonwealth officials of failing to make an adequate education available to all public schoolchildren, thus violating the state constitution.

According to a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the suit was filed in Commonwealth Court by six school districts, the parents of students, the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools and the Pennsylvania state conference of the NAACP. It claims the state failed to provide enough money to public schools and permitted those in poor areas to operate with inadequate funding, as compared with schools in wealthy districts.

“It turns the caliber of public education into an accident of geography,” said the complaint. “Children in property – and income-poor districts are denied the opportunity to receive even an adequate education, while their peers in property- and income-rich districts enjoy a high-quality education.”

It’s difficult to argue with something so obvious as that.

Among those targeted by the suit are Gov. Tom Corbett, the leaders of the state House and Senate, and the chief of the state Education Department.

A spokesman for the Department of Education, Tim Eller, told the Post-Gazette in 1997, when the rural and small schools association had another, similar suit pending in the courts, the state was spending $13.7 billion on public schools. By last year, he said, that number rose to $27.6 billion.

That’s hardly a defense. It simply means the cost of educating the state’s children – rich and poor – has gotten considerably more expensive. Ensuring high-quality education for every student in every district is something else entirely.

Steve Miskin, speaking for House Republicans, told the newspaper that lawmakers do, indeed, attempt to address the needs of poorer districts by directing more state funds to them. That may well help, but when local revenues are so limited in some areas, that clearly does not solve all the problems.

The Post-Gazette reports the state Supreme Court, in 1999, nixed two suits involving inequitable public school funding, ruling ultimately the court could not overrule the Legislature on decisions about education.

However, the attorneys who brought the latest suit are convinced they have a better argument this time because of the development and imposition of state standards that tell whether students are achieving what they should in their classes and, by extension, reveal whether the state is providing all youngsters with adequate instruction.

Education funding was a key issue in the just-completed governor’s race, and we are encouraged the incoming state chief executive, Gov.-elect Tom Wolf, is promising to do more on that front. It’s clearly needed. Michael Churchill of the Public Interest Law Center in Philadelphia told the Post-Gazette Pennsylvania ranks higher than only three other states in the country in terms of the percentage of public school funding that comes from state coffers.

But spending more, in and of itself, doesn’t necessarily level the playing field between the haves and have-nots, and whether the lawsuit is successful or not, we would hope state officials recognize the damage that is being done, now and for our future, by turning a blind eye to the lack of quality education in many corners of our state.

Fixing what ails our education system won’t be cheap, but the current, inequitable system of funding public schools in Pennsylvania is perpetuating a permanent underclass, and that costs us far more in the long run.