Debate over school vouchers heats up in state Legislature -Daily Local News 2/6/2011

The Daily Local (dailylocal.com), Serving Chester County, PA

Debate over school vouchers heats up in state Legislature
Sunday, February 6, 2011

By MARK SCOLFORO, Associated Press

HARRISBURG — Supporters call them a matter of choice, a lifeline for children stuck in broken schools. Opponents deride them as unconstitutional and unworkable and warn that they will erode conditions in some of Pennsylvania's most troubled schools.

The debate over taxpayer-paid tuition vouchers to help poor children find alternatives to attending the state's weakest-performing public schools has emerged as a major item on the legislative agenda for the next six months — perhaps the major item after the state budget.

The voucher issue will come to the fore in the General Assembly on Feb. 16, when the chairman of the Senate Education Committee will lead a hearing on his bill to establish the Opportunity Scholarship and Educational Improvement Tax Credit Act.

Although some aspects of the proposal would be phased in, by its third year the bill would allow public school students whose families make no more than 130 percent of federal poverty guidelines — about $29,000 for a family of four — to take the per-pupil subsidy that state government sends to their school district and use it to attend a different private, public or religious school.

It also would increase funding from $75 million to $100 million for an existing program that gives tax breaks to businesses that finance tuition scholarships for children in lower-income families.

"This is a freedom issue, an issue that parents find themselves trapped in a district that isn't serving the needs of their child," said the prime sponsor, Sen. Jeff Piccola, R-Dauphin.

Piccola said precise figures on the cost are still being worked out.

Both Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and a prominent Democratic state senator, Anthony Hardy Williams of Philadelphia, supported vouchers when they were candidates in last year's gubernatorial campaign.

Corbett, as a candidate, proposed a school grading system to determine which students are eligible for such vouchers. To get vouchers to pass this year, it may cost him some political capital — vouchers failed in the Legislature twice in the 1990s, despite strong advocacy by Republican Gov. Tom Ridge.

Corbett "is in the process of reviewing the proposal and looks forward to working with his colleagues in the House and Senate to finalize the details of the legislation," his spokeswoman, Janet Kelley, said Friday.

House Education Committee Chairman Paul Clymer said that while he supports the concept behind Piccola's bill, he has questions about its finer points and will wait to act until he sees what gets out of the Senate.

"It's not going to be a two-week foray into the legislative process," said Clymer, R-Bucks. "It's going to take time."

The proposal also faces strong opposition from the state school boards' association and teachers' unions.

Sen. Daylin Leach, a Montgomery County Democrat who serves on the Education Committee that Piccola chairs, said a voucher law that subsidizes private school tuition would drain resources from some of the most troubled school districts. When a student leaves, the school still has to pay teachers, the electric bill, and many other fixed costs, he said.

"When you talk about 'leaving children behind,' there's no more stark example," Leach said.

Leach said state money for private school tuition would have to come with greater accountability, something the schools themselves may not want. He has doubts how many schools will accept the vouchers under what would be an optional participation model.

"One of the things that high-performing, affluent schools sell is class size is lower," he said. "Are they going to want to take a bunch of kids at half the (tuition) price, or less? It's not going to happen."

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association, which just published a 21-page special edition of School Leader News to galvanize opposition, argues that vouchers would violate a provision of the state constitution and that, rather than fix the state's worst public schools, they would serve to exacerbate their problems.

The school boards say parents may choose different schools for many reasons, not simply because their child's current school is academically weak, and they challenge the contention of voucher supporters that their use in other states has improved student performance.

"In our view, it really isn't fixing the problem for all of the kids," said Tim Allwein, a point person for the PSBA in dealing with the Legislature. "It's fixing the problem for some of the kids."

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