Corbett campaign lied about Rendell's record

By Donna Cooper

Few Pennsylvanians were surprised that Tom Corbett lost last week. Most pundits point to the Corbett education cuts as the leading reason for his defeat. The Corbett campaign contended that he did not cut education and that his predecessor, Ed Rendell, was responsible for the cuts. I thought this issue was decided by the voters, but I continue to see reports, including in The Inquirer, that there is some debate over who was more responsible for schools being poorly funded.

There can be absolutely no debate over Rendell's commitment to education. During his eight years as governor, K-12 schools received an increase of $2.4 billion annually, the biggest increase in the commonwealth's history. The money was targeted to programs that research indicated would have the best results, like full-day kindergarten. Rendell battled with the legislature to increase education funding each and every year, and Pennsylvania was the only state in America to increase education funding in the two worst years of the recession.

The investment paid off! In Rendell's last year as governor, U.S. News and World Report ranked Pennsylvania fourth among states in the quality of public education, and the Center for Education Policy in Washington found that Pennsylvania was the only state that had increases in every subject tested and at every grade tested on the national test.

The Corbett campaign also perpetuated the hoax that the governor had no choice but to decrease funds for schools because he inherited a state budget that was bleeding red ink due to wanton spending by Rendell. The fact is, when Corbett took office, state revenues had already returned to their relatively robust prerecession levels. In Rendell's last year in office, with the full cooperation of the legislature, including all Republican leaders, the Corbett administration took the reins of the state with a $1 billion surplus. Don't believe me? Look up the state's official financial statements for fiscal year 2011, published by the governor's own budget office.

In fact, the state's surplus was large enough for the state to absorb the portion of school funding that had been supported with federal stimulus funds. Instead, Corbett slashed state funds for schools by nearly $1 billion. Not only did he unnecessarily pull the rug out from the schools, but in that same year, he quietly gave the business sector a $400 million tax break and carried over a $659 million surplus in state funds to the next year.

Corbett's campaign did a terrific job of hiding the truth that the nearly $1 billion cut to public education was driven by his own philosophical views, not budget imperatives foisted on him by anyone, not an irresponsible legislature, and not Rendell.

At the same time that it was defending his massive education cuts, the Corbett campaign attempted to peddle the contradictory narrative that his budgets included record high levels of school aid, which was honest to a point. His calculations for school aid included the state funds for teacher pension payments. Pension payments are not exactly money to operate a school. But including the pension payments padded the total education spending and certainly gave the talking point the veneer of accuracy. The cynical effort to point to record high levels of state spending for schools may have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Parents across the state saw their schools decimated by layoffs, after-school sports became a family expense, and the supports students need to succeed became nonexistent.

It seems pretty clear that Gov.-elect Tom Wolf has a mandate to improve public education. That clear statement of public support to restore the state's investment in schools must be acted on quickly.

To start, the new governor must make a clear and unequivocal request to the legislature to adopt a funding formula akin to the one adopted in 2006. If such a formula were in place today, school districts across the region would be $300 million ahead, with $265 million of that amount helping the Philadelphia School District meet its crushing needs.

To pay for this urgent reinvestment in public education, the governor-elect must also move quickly to convince the legislature to enact a severance tax on natural-gas shale drilling. Those funds should be targeted to restore the education cuts and for a bold proposal to make high-quality pre-K available for every eligible child in the state. If he goes down this road, Tom Wolf will find the same voters who resoundingly elected him supporting him once again in this effort.