Pa.’s underfunded schools have fewer teachers — especially in STEM, art, foreign language — compared to well-funded peers, report says

In Pennsylvania, the more poorly funded a school district is, the fewer teachers it has — particularly in subjects like STEM, arts, and foreign language, according to a new analysis of staffing ratios and funding levels across the commonwealth.

That may not come as a surprise; a school district needs money to pay teachers. But the report released this month by the Philadelphia-based education research nonprofit Research for Action calculates just how much staffing varies between districts, and what that means for student-teacher ratios, availability of teachers in specialized subjects, and reliance on support staff to fill in gaps.

And in Pennsylvania, the funding disparities between wealthy and poor districts are among the widest in the country, a system that a Commonwealth Court judge declared unconstitutional earlier this year.

“We talk so much about funding, and how differently school districts are funded, and we have sort of vague notions that that means less,” said David Lapp, director of policy research at Research for Action. He noted that while the funding trial featured testimony from six districts about what they lacked, the effect of inadequate funding on resources available to schools statewide was less evident.

“This is a very basic and very concrete example of what that means, in terms of probably the most important and biggest use of funding” in schools, Lapp said.

While districts that are adequately funded have on average 76.1 teachers per 1,000 students, those with the largest funding shortfalls have 64.8 teachers per 1,000 students, according to the report, which used data from 2019-20. (It assessed shortfalls based on an expert report presented by plaintiffs in the funding trial, describing 73 of Pennsylvania’s 500 districts as adequately funded, but the rest requiring anywhere from $1 to $9,700 more per student.)

The Lower Merion School District, for instance, has 80.4 teachers per 1,000 students, while Philadelphia has 59.6. (Philadelphia has a higher rate of professional support staff than Lower Merion — 13.3 per 1,000 students, compared to Lower Merion’s 9.8; Lapp said data suggest poorly funded districts may be relying on support staff to compensate for not having enough credentialed teachers.)

Broken down by subject, districts with the largest funding shortfalls have 21% fewer STEM teachers than adequately funded districts, 33% fewer art teachers, and 62% fewer foreign language teachers, among other areas.

And the discrepancies aren’t just in how many teachers districts have, but how much they pay them: On the whole, teachers in adequately funded districts have average salaries of $83,400, compared to $67,000 in those with the highest shortfalls.

That combination of higher pay coupled with better staffing levels is “very powerful,” Lapp said: “If you can pay more and require less of them or have more reasonable working expectations,” a school district becomes “a much more attractive place for teachers and other staff.” As a result, the most desirable teachers then become concentrated in better-funded districts, he said.

While improved funding for worse-off districts won’t immediately fix the problem, Lapp said, he noted that poorer communities have higher teacher attrition.

“If we can fix that pay and workload, it’s reasonable to expect” teachers in those districts would leave at lower rates, he said.

How Pennsylvania’s school funding — which relies heavily on property taxes — may change as a result of the court ruling isn’t yet clear. Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed a funding boost in the forthcoming budget, with an added $567 million in the state’s main subsidy to public schools; Democratic lawmakers and advocates say that’s not enough, pointing to the calculation by plaintiffs’ expert that schools are underfunded by $4.6 billion.

To match the staffing in adequately funded districts, Pennsylvania’s underfunded districts would need to hire 11,000 additional teachers, 1,000 administrators, and 1,600 professional support staff and spend an additional $2.6 billion in salaries, according to the Research for Action report.

The report follows an analysis last year by Research for Action assessing students’ access to educational opportunities, including certified teachers, STEM-certified teachers, and teachers with at least two years of experience, among other factors. That study found Black and Hispanic students in Pennsylvania are provided less access to educational opportunity than Black and Hispanic students in most other states, while white Pennsylvania students have greater access to educational opportunity than white students elsewhere.

“The evidence is showing really clearly that inequity is the single defining characteristic of public education in Pennsylvania,” Lapp said.