“Unlike what we hear in the Capitol, Pennsylvania is not the highest-taxed state or the highest spending state,” said Sharon Ward, director of the left-leaning think tank. “In fact, we are in the lower half of the country. We rank 32nd [highest] on taxes and 30th on government spending, as a share of personal income.”

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Wagner’s agency released an audit finding that from the three-year period ending in mid-2006, “25 state agencies filled 569 civil service employment positions without considering eligible veterans.”

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“We’d be very open to working to reform the special education funding system, but is our system broken? No,” said John Tommasini, director of the state’s Bureau of Special Education.

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Rhoades, who had been in the state Senate since 1981, was reelected on Nov. 4 after a fatal car crash in October while he was on his way to a high school sporting event.

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After dying in a car crash in October, Rhoades was posthumously reelected with 63 percent of the vote on Election Day. He defeated Democrat Peter “P.J.” Symons, the Schuylkill County prothonotary, who received 35 percent, and independent candidate Dennis Baylor, who received 2 percent of the vote.

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The plan will step up requirements for students seeking teaching certifications and for the teachers who train them. Instead of the current system of one certification for all teachers of kindergarten through sixth grade, the new guidelines offer separate certifications for teachers of pre-kindergarten through fourth grade and fifth through eighth grade. The guidelines also require that all teachers receive special education training.

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