[Temple Owl]

ping

[Diva Betsy Ross]

PA homeschooling bump. I just hate this guy.

[Democratic_Machiavelli]

all-day Kindergarten ping

[Democratic_Machiavelli]

If I remember correctly, Pennsylvania was where they had that trouble a few years ago with children forcibly being examined (completely examined), in spite of waivers signed by parents saying their private physician would fulfill the state requirement.

Promote family rights bump.

[Alberta's Child]

Pennsylvanians placed 46th out of the 50 states on the SAT college entrance exam.

I'm no fan of public education, but this is always one of the most deceptive statistics that is used in assessing school performance.

My parochial high school actually had a lower average SAT school than the public high school in the same town, but what the statistics didn't reveal was that 98% of my graduating class took the SAT while less than 50% of the public school students did.

[netmilsmom]

Bump for later read..

[Genaro]

Rendell is obviously pandering to his base and redistributing income like all DEMS do. With a proposal to increase to 3.75% of gross makes one think of moving to Florida. Too bad Matt Ryan is dead; he might have been able to stop this.

[bvw]

How much of that state money is dumped, wasted, in The Philadelphia School System of Chaos, Danger and Despair?

[Hamiltonian]

Out of control school spending by non-accountable school boards has created an opportunity for the RATs.

Rendell is brilliant here in his pursuit of enhanced socialist corruption. He can pit (a) working people against (b) retired people owning a house and (c) the teachers union.

Using the RAT model, everyone can assume that spiralling education costs are due to increased expenses associated with things that directly educate students. That way noone will question $millions for high school sports complexes, band uniforms, school directors creating unnecessary "administrative" posts for their relatives, and adding "Why does Heather have Two Mommies" to the curriculum instead of outmoded things like math.

The Philly School Board itself admits that teachers are <50% of the total budget.

Teachers can think that the cost increases are due to their union "fighting" to get them a better wage. I doubt if teachers make much more today in real dollars than they did 20 years ago.

Retirees want their real estate school taxes to be paid by someone else. It is key to convince them that out-of-control school costs are inevitable. Enough retirees in Pennsylvania consider FDR as comparable with the Pope, therefore they will drink the Kool-Aid and plan their next trip to Las Vegas, happy that they won't have to pay for the next round of State level corruption.

This leaves working people. If they protest this tax increase, they will be demonized as anti-old people and anti-teachers.

This could have been prevented. The idiots are the money behind the Republican party in Pa. (who told Mark Schweiker they wouldn't back him). Mike Fischer has always been a non-entity.

Schweiker would have flattened either Rendell or Casey jr. last year.