Election 2014: A look at Corbett and Wolf on education

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

OK, let’s get right to the looming question: Did Gov. Corbett cut a billion dollars from public, K-12 education?

That question can be answered in different ways. It all depends on what you count, and how you count it.

If you say yes, Corbett did cut the money, here’s how your logic goes, as put together by Democrat Tom Wolf.

The Wolf case vs. Corbett

First, you note that actual classroom spending decreased because Corbett didn’t replace the federal stimulus funds that former Gov. Ed Rendell used to prop up schools through the early years of the Great Recession. You point out that, by contrast, he made up for the stimulus funds lost by the Departments of Corrections and Public Welfare.

"Education was a conscious cut, was a conscious redirection of priorities. I would not have had those same priorities," Wolf said at a teachers’ union event in August.

If you’re making the anti-Corbett case, you insist he should have been more creative in where he found cash for education.

"Decriminalizing marijuana, legalizing medical marijuana," Wolf said in August, "those things alone would stop a big chunk of the flow, immediately, of the people into our prisons, and reduce the need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on new prisons."

Corbett also cut the extra money Rendell had been sending to districts to defray the costs of charter schools. This hurt urban districts like Philadelphia, Reading and York especially.

"There are good charter schools," said Wolf, "but I think we need to make sure the funding for charter schools is fair."

If you’re anti-Corbett, you also don’t count any of the money he has poured into the state employee pension system, which is the lifeblood of the state’s retired teachers.

Your argument for ignoring that effort on his part is that voters should look mostly at class sizes, classroom resources, and local property taxes. In the last four years, each has gone in the wrong direction.

The Corbett case for his record

If, on the other hand, you say no, the billion dollar cut line is baloney, here’s how you do your math, as explained by Gov. Corbett himself.

Rendell should have never used federal stimulus funding to prop up education, Corbett says. Everyone knew it was merely intended to be a shot in the arm – not something to count on for years to come.

"Because that’s when the cut took place," Corbett said at the second of three gubernatorial debates. "You cannot deny that."

To really replace the stimulus money, he says, would have required draining other important parts of the state budget.

"I had a choice of going back and taking money out of the areas that state money was moved to from the budget and putting it back in, and chose not to," said Corbett at a recent interview at WHYY. "So yes, that was a choice."

The other option would have been steep tax increases, which Corbett says would have crippled the state’s economic recovery. Instead, Corbett says he counted on school districts themselves to rein in spending.

"We look to the school districts to control their spending. ‘Cause it’s there. They’re the ones that make the decision how much they’re going to spend," he said at the WHYY interview.

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