Back to schools: Wolf's mandate

Education funding may have been the crucial issue that united Pennsylvania voters in deciding to elect a new governor. A statewide coalition promoting more money for schools had been struggling to get traction, but it found its strength on Election Day.

Parents, students, and teachers will have to keep up the pressure on the legislature if Gov.-elect Tom Wolf is to deliver on his plan to impose a 5 percent tax on natural-gas extraction and spend most of the revenue on education. The defeat of Gov. Corbett, who opposed a gas tax, should help push the legislature in that direction. But nothing in Harrisburg is ever guaranteed.

Wolf is likely to face the same difficulties Corbett did as a tenderfoot governor trying to press his agenda with legislators who have other allegiances, not all of them political. Corbett never did find his groove. Here's hoping Wolf can do better.

Perhaps a new administration will finally end the seemingly endless debate over whether Corbett or his predecessor, Ed Rendell, was more responsible for schools being poorly funded. It's time to stop talking and do something about it.

Inadequate state funding has forced school districts across Pennsylvania to increase local property taxes to fill the gap. That may have worked fine in affluent districts with the tax bases to support the need. But not in poor districts like Philadelphia, Allentown, and Reading.

Along with increased funding, Wolf wants to distribute the money differently. Corbett abandoned the funding formula Rendell implemented after a "costing-out" study determined each district's needs. An education funding commission created by the legislature has been meeting this year, but Wolf may take another route.

In that regard, a new study conducted for Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower, and Rebuild (POWER) indicates that mostly white school districts in Pennsylvania typically receive more basic-education funding than more diverse districts, even when their poverty rates are similar.

The data appear to provide more evidence that the current funding system is severely flawed. Expectations for Wolf to erase past discrepancies are high.