HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania will spend nearly 40% of its $50.8 billion budget on education this year. The size of that obligation, and its impact on children, teenagers, and college students across the commonwealth, make it an enormous part of annual spending talks.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a prominent issue in the 2026 race for governor.

Incumbent Democrat Josh Shapiro has spent his governorship threading a needle on education. He has backed big spending increases, particularly for the commonwealth’s most inadequately funded public school districts. At the same time, he’s supported a taxpayer-funded private school voucher program — something many Democrats oppose.

Republican state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, like many in her party, strongly supports public school alternatives. On higher education, she also focuses on tuition freezes, transparency, and industrial job creation to retain local talent.

Shapiro’s own higher education platform focuses on state coordination, expanded grants, and initiatives aimed at helping more Pennsylvanians earn degrees.

The issue can be complex. Here’s a look at where the major party candidates stand on key debates about K-12 and higher education.

Higher education

The governor exercises wide-ranging authority over public postsecondary policy — from proposing higher education line items in the annual budget to sitting on university governing boards.

The commonwealth has persistently lagged the rest of the nation in higher education support. Pennsylvania ranks 46th nationally in per-student state appropriations to public colleges and universities, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.

At the same time, its undergraduates face some of the heaviest debt burdens in the country, according to national rankings, leaving the next governor to inherit a system under intense pressure from students, parents and taxpayers alike.

Vision for Pa. colleges and universities

In his 2024-25 budget, Shapiro established the State Board of Higher Education, which brings together education, business, and government leaders from across Pennsylvania to improve coordination and ensure public and state-related universities align with workforce needs.

The board unanimously approved a 10-year strategic plan for higher education, which aims to increase credential attainment, control student costs, and align academic programs with high-priority economic sectors.

“Governor Josh Shapiro believes that if you work hard and want to build your future in Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth should open doors — not put up barriers,” said Sam Reposa, a spokesperson for the Shapiro campaign, in an email to Spotlight PA.

The governor’s team noted that his budgets delivered a 6% funding increase for Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) schools and community colleges, alongside $120 million in expanded funding for student grants and scholarships.

“Pennsylvania’s students deserve access to quality higher education opportunities that help them get ahead instead of holding them back with a lifetime commitment to paying off debt,” Reposa said.

Garrity focuses her higher education vision on ensuring students have immediate job opportunities after graduating.

In an emailed statement to Spotlight PA, Garrity’s campaign said her administration will work to reverse the migration of residents leaving the state, to ensure that “those who attend a college or university in the commonwealth have a place they can build a career, build a family, and build a home.”

“One of the best ways to achieve that goal is to ensure job opportunities exist for new graduates,” the campaign said. “For instance, under Josh Shapiro, we are not maximizing opportunities in the energy industry — jobs that can range from blue collar to white collar, engineering to business. And if we were to unleash our commonwealth’s natural gas industry, we can produce 200,000 good-paying jobs during the course of my administration.”

Performance-based funding

Pennsylvania’s four state-related universities — Lincoln, Penn State, Pitt, and Temple — operate as public-private hybrids. While they maintain independent governing boards and operational autonomy, they receive hundreds of millions of dollars in annual state subsidies.

Since 2019, state funding for these universities has been flat, steadily losing ground to inflation.

Shapiro has requested increases to these appropriations, but state lawmakers haven’t budged.

In his 2026-27 budget, Shapiro proposed a $30 million performance-based funding pool, which would distribute aid to these universities based on student success metrics like graduation rates, instate enrollment, and workforce alignment.

State lawmakers ultimately approved $10 million in the final budget.

The Shapiro campaign did not indicate to Spotlight PA whether he would continue to seek increases to baseline appropriations for state-related universities in a second term.

Garrity’s campaign did not respond to a Spotlight PA question regarding performance-based funding.

Transparency at state-related universities

Since state-related universities operate as independent, nonprofit institutions, they are largely exempt from the state’s Right-to-Know Law.

In 2023, Shapiro signed legislation requiring these universities to publish expanded disclosures regarding their finances, employment, and operations.

His strategic plan calls for creating centralized public dashboards that track returns on investment, graduation rates, and institutional spending.

Garrity’s campaign said she supports fully subjecting state-related universities to the Right-to-Know Law, to align their disclosure requirements with PASSHE institutions and community colleges.

“The Garrity-Richey administration is committed to ensuring that transparency is a part of all levels of Government,” the campaign said in an emailed statement to Spotlight PA. “As Governor, Stacy Garrity would support submitting state-related universities to the RTK Law, similar to how the PASSHE schools operate.”

Affordability and debt relief

The two candidates offer competing models for controlling college costs.

Garrity proposes a mandatory five-year tuition lock for every incoming undergraduate.

“As soon as a student pays their first tuition bill, that price is locked in for five years and cannot be raised on a year-to-year basis,” her campaign said in an emailed statement to Spotlight PA. “Students should not be burdened by unpredictable tuition rates; this will help them with their plans after graduation.”

Shapiro favors income-targeted caps, proposing to limit out-of-pocket tuition and fees to $1,000 per semester at PASSHE state universities and community colleges for families earning $70,000 or less.

His campaign pointed to his record as governor and his previous tenure as attorney general.

“As Attorney General, Shapiro cracked down on predatory lenders and delivered millions in student loan debt cancellation to Pennsylvania students,” Reposa said. “As Governor, he invested millions into scholarships and grants to make college more affordable.”

K-12 education

In 2023, Commonwealth Court ruled that Pennsylvania’s system for funding public schools was so inequitable it violated the state constitution. The court ordered lawmakers to fix it, though it did not provide an exact remedy.

That ruling has shaped debates over K-12 education since, often centering on what policies can truly make education equitable. Is it more aggressively funding struggling public schools with poor constituencies, an approach many — but not all — Democrats favor? Or is it offering students resources to leave those districts and attend private school, a method many Republicans prefer?

Or is it some combination?

Adequacy and overall funding

After the Commonwealth Court order, lawmakers assembled a commission to study the state’s education funding system and issue an action report. They settled on trying to fix it using a concept they call an adequacy formula, which directs money to the most inadequately funded schools.

Lawmakers argued over the size of this adequacy gap. The initial report lawmakers put together estimated it was $5.4 billion, but only Democrats signed off on that number; Republicans balked at the size, and also argued nonmonetary reforms could help.

But in 2024, the legislature passed a budget with a new funding formula and an initial adequacy payment. The budget’s fiscal note calculated the total gap as being a bit smaller than the report’s estimate, $4.5 billion. As of this year, they’ve put $1.9 billion toward closing the gap.

All told, the state has added more than $3 billion in education funding during Shapiro’s tenure, his office said after the most recent state budget passed.

“Governor Shapiro delivered four balanced, bipartisan budgets that have put money back in hardworking families’ pockets,” his campaign said in a statement, noting that these have included the continuation of a free breakfast program started by Shapiro’s predecessor and the introduction of a program that gives stipends to student teachers.

The campaign said the “work isn’t done, and the fight to continue delivering for our kids is a fundamental question in this election.”

Garrity has criticized the state’s education spending, telling the Center Square that “obviously, throwing money isn’t working.”

Her campaign said in a statement that she wants to reexamine the adequacy formula to “ensure that money is being spent effectively.” It didn’t say what changes she might consider, though said she would still comply with Commonwealth Court’s order.

The Shapiro campaign’s statement, citing Garrity’s criticism of the state’s education spending, said that her “extreme agenda would set our Commonwealth back.”

Garrity’s campaign also said she would enact “third grade promotion,” which blocks students who aren’t meeting reading goals from moving to fourth grade. It said her vision is that these students would receive monitoring and core reading instruction from a trained teacher.

Also called third grade retention, this practice is mandatory in 10 states and optional in more than two dozen. Studies have shown mixed impacts on student reading.

Funding alternatives to public schools

A perennial conflict in Harrisburg is whether to allocate more state funding to public school alternatives.

This debate, which doesn’t break neatly down partisan lines, primarily concerns two financial instruments: existing education tax credit programs and proposed school vouchers, which the state has not implemented (though lawmakers have come close).

Voucher programs use public money to pay for students’ tuition at private and religious schools. Supporters say this gives important options to kids who live in struggling public districts. Critics argue vouchers weaken public schools by siphoning funds.

Shapiro has been more open to funding public school alternatives than many Democrats — vouchers in particular.

He first voiced support for them during his 2022 bid for governor, and actively pursued a voucher program during his first budget negotiation the following year. At one point during talks, he appeared on Fox News and said, “I believe every child of God deserves a shot here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and one of the best ways we can guarantee their success is making sure every child has a quality education.”

At the time, he said he’d support a voucher program as long as it didn’t take any funding away from public education.

That voucher push ended in a debacle. After the GOP-controlled state Senate passed a spending plan that included a $100 million voucher program, the Democratic-led state House balked. Shapiro, under pressure from his party, line-item vetoed the voucher program. Senators said he’d betrayed them, and talks broke down. Shapiro’s relationship with top Senate leaders has never quite recovered.

Shapiro described the voucher program as “unfinished business” after that budget cycle, and said he still supported it.

In recent talks on state spending, the issue has been much less prominent. Shapiro’s campaign didn’t respond to questions about whether his stance has changed, though he has never indicated publicly that it has.

Garrity is definitively in favor of vouchers and has accused Shapiro of flip-flopping.

“Josh Shapiro has been all over the map,” she said in an appearance before the Pennsylvania Press Club last winter. “Josh Shapiro has held not one, not two, but three positions on school choice. I hold one position: parents, not bureaucrats, make the best decisions for their child’s future.”

Garrity’s campaign told Spotlight PA in a statement that she is “committed to putting Pennsylvania students first,” which it said would include making it a priority to “enact a scholarship program, like Lifeline Scholarships.” That proposal, introduced by legislative Republicans but never enacted, would have required districts with schools categorized as “low-achieving” to annually notify families that their kids qualify for first-come, first-served state-funded scholarships.

Pennsylvania also has two long-running tax credit programs that work like vouchers — they provide tax breaks to businesses and individuals that donate to scholarships that help students to attend private schools.

The EITC, or Educational Improvement Tax Credit, is currently available to any student whose household makes a maximum of $122,322, plus $21,531 for each dependent. The OSTC, or Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit, is much smaller, limited to students in the commonwealth’s poorest-performing schools.

The programs have ballooned over the past few decades. The EITC was created in 2001 as a program capped at $30 million; the current cap for EITC and OSTC combined is $680 million.

Debates about these programs center on their size and transparency.

Currently, scholarship organizations must report to the state the size of awards, which school districts students previously attended, and which private schools they switch to. They don’t have to track awardees’ household income or how much tuition they still pay after the scholarship. Critics say those pieces of information would allow better assessments of the programs’ effectiveness.

During Shapiro’s tenure as governor, funding for EITC and OSTC has increased by more than $200 million. When he entered office in 2022, the combined cap for EITC and OSTC was $465 million. However, the 2026-27 budget that Shapiro signed in July did not include spending increases for either program — a shift from prior years.

Shapiro’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment about his vision for future spending on or reforms to those programs.

Garrity’s campaign told Spotlight PA she wants to strengthen and preserve EITC and OSTC, and that she would raise the dollar cap on EITC by another $60 million, “allowing for more scholarship opportunities.”

The federal government has also launched an educational tax credit program that works like Pennsylvania’s. States must decide whether to opt in.

Shapiro’s administration has said he hasn’t yet decided whether Pennsylvania will join, and that he’s awaiting more details. He has until the end of the year.

Garrity supports joining the program, and her campaign said she would do so “on day one.” She has accused Shapiro of dragging his feet.

Charter and cyber charter oversight

Pennsylvania charter schools are funded through a system in which public districts pay tuition for any student who lives within their borders and opt to attend a charter. Rates are calculated based on the district’s per-student spending, with some deductions.

It’s an old system, and public school advocates have argued for years that they’re paying too much — particularly for cyber charter schools, which have recently ballooned in popularity and have much lower overhead costs. Some cyber charters have accumulated large surpluses.

Last year, lawmakers made a few updates aimed specifically at cyber charters, including letting public schools deduct more expenses from their cyber tuition, tightening language around student wellness checks, and requiring families to prove district residency more often.

GOP leaders say those adjustments should close the issue; Democrats have argued there’s more to do, including further cutting public schools’ payments to charters and capping cyber charters’ surpluses.

Shapiro has repeatedly proposed funding cyber charters using a per-student base rate of $8,000, rather than the current, widely variable district-based spending. In his most recent budget pitch, he shifted gears, instead pitching a system in which public schools could deduct more expenses before calculating their cyber charter payments, and cyber charters’ funding formula would be tweaked to functionally cap their tuition rates.

Neither of these reform styles has made progress in the GOP-controlled state Senate.

Shapiro’s campaign didn’t respond to requests for comment on additional charter school reforms he supports, either on funding or transparency. However, he has frequently promoted last year’s cyber charter changes, which were estimated to save public school districts about $178 million cumulatively.

Garrity’s campaign called both brick-and-mortar and cyber charters “a great option for students” that lets them “learn in an environment that best suits them.”

It said that instead of passing flat tuition rates or any other new reforms, Garrity would wait to see the impact of the state’s recent changes.

“As Governor, Stacy Garrity would look at the surplus accumulation and look at the balance sheets of all school districts, as well as charter schools and cyber charter schools to ensure the fiscal stability of the districts,” the campaign wrote.

Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom producing investigative and public-service journalism that holds power to account and drives positive change in Pennsylvania.

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