PA’s Workforce Skills Gap Demands Adequate Funding For All Schools
Recently I was reading through a new ReadyNation report, “Equitable School Funding – A Must For Pennsylvania’s Economic Competitiveness,” and had an important takeaway from the article that, “adequate and equitable long-term basic education funding through Pennsylvania’s fair funding formula is necessary to ensure all students, regardless of zip code, receive a quality education making them ready for the 21st Century workplace.”
The ReadyNation report highlights a recent survey by the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry that showed only one in five of Pennsylvania’s employers rate the readiness of the current labor force as excellent or good. The survey also shows that more than half of employers – 52 percent – say they have great difficulty recruiting qualified job candidates, and 56 percent believe it will get harder by 2021.
The report cautions that skills employers need are all built on a foundation of solid academics, but too few Pennsylvania children are achieving in school. According to the report:
• 61 percent of Pennsylvania eighth graders are NOT proficient in reading, 64 percent are NOT proficient in math, and 67 percent are NOT proficient in science, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress. For the many children in economically disadvantaged families, average math scores are 32 points lower than their better-off peers.
• Only 45 percent of Pennsylvania public school students meet all predictors of college success.
• About 15 percent of Pennsylvania’s high school freshmen fail to graduate within four years. Among economically disadvantaged students, it’s nearly one quarter.
“Pennsylvania’s economy depends on the capability of its workforce,” said Stephanie Doliveira, Vice President of Human Resources for Sheetz, Inc., commenting on the report. “Our current workforce gaps paired with this lack of college or career readiness in our youth could have devastating impacts on our state and national economy.” Doliveira went on to say, “We must invest more now to ensure that ALL of our public education systems have adequate resources ensuring student success and a future pipeline of skilled workers.”
The report identifies that too many young Pennsylvanians attend schools that lack adequate resources to ensure a quality education. According to the report, Pennsylvania has the nation’s widest per-pupil spending gap between wealthy and poor school districts. Pennsylvania’s wealthiest districts spend 33.5 percent more than the poorest school districts. That gap is significantly higher than the national average of 15.6 percent. Pennsylvania is also third worst in the nation in the percentage of children attending severely financially distressed school districts.
According to the report, studies show that school finance reforms that invest in K-12 education over the long term can significantly improve student achievement. This is especially true when additional school funding is directed to help those students most in need, is reliably available each year, and is allocated to improving the classroom and direct services to children. Adequate and reliable school funding means:
• Smaller class sizes so teachers can focus more on each student;
• Access to skilled teachers and critical lab, computer, and other equipment for STEM education;
• Increased learning time for students;
• Increased opportunities for full-day kindergarten; and
• Increased opportunities for diverse academic offerings and other specialty programs such as Career Academies.
The ReadyNation report credits state lawmakers for taking an important step in closing education funding inequalities by adopting the fair funding formula which takes into account a school district’s size, wealth, and community needs like number of students living in poverty. But it argues that in order to close the Commonwealth’s workforce skills gap and ensure our economic competitiveness, greater long-term basic education funding through this formula is needed.
ReadyNation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of more than 2,000 business leaders nationwide. Together, they aim to strengthen the workforce, business climate, and economy by focusing greater attention on the value of research-proven investments in children’s learning and development. For more information or to read the article I refer to above, please visit: http://bit.ly/2j2WhFy