Pa. students’ test scores improve in all categories

HARRISBURG (AP) — Pennsylvania students registered improved math and reading scores for all seven grade levels that take the state’s standardized tests, an achievement state education officials called unprecedented on Monday.

“It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” Education Department spokesman Mike Race told reporters. “It shows that the strategic investments that we’ve been making are actually paying off.”

Gains since last year on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests were typically a percentage point or two, although the share of seventh-graders who are proficient or advanced in math rose from 70.6 percent to 75.5 percent.

Looking farther back, the percentage of fifth-graders at grade level in math has increased from 53.1 percent in 2002 to 73.6 percent today. The segment of eighth-graders who reached the same benchmark in reading has increased from 58.8 percent to 80.9 percent over the same period.

Statewide figures were released Monday, but school-by-school scores are not expected to be made public until next month.

Education Secretary Gerald Zahorchak said he hoped the results would bolster the case for the hundreds of millions of dollars in increased state education funding that Gov. Ed Rendell wants despite Pennsylvania’s recession-driven falloff in state tax collections.

Zahorchak said the gains were made with the help of state aid for early childhood education, tutoring and other programs that are threatened by the budget ax.

“We’re in a conversation right now that we don’t want to look back at in August and say, ‘I wish we would have told people about the results while they were making financial decisions about our state,’” he said during a conference call with reporters from a special-education leadership conference in Bedford.

Education spending constitutes a massive portion of the state budget, and Rendell has proposed a $418 million increase, or about 8 percent, in basic education payments to school districts.

Republicans in the Legislature say that large of an increase is unnecessary at a time when stimulus dollars can help increase federal and state school funding in Pennsylvania by about 10 percent.

“That is a remarkable increase anytime, but particularly so in such a tough economy,” said Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware. “I am encouraged by the new PSSA test scores, and I believe our budget proposal provides adequate support for public schools to continue improving their results.”

But administration officials say the stimulus money was designed to plug school districts’ revenue shortfalls and retain teachers. Other federal support is aimed for specific needs and does not help all districts, they say.

The Education Department said the latest results showed nearly three out of four students are currently at their appropriate grade level in reading and in math. Officials highlighted that the number of fifth-graders and eighth-graders who received the lowest grades in math has fallen sharply since 2002.

Race said the state’s funding for K-12 education grew by $1.54 billion from 2005-06 to 2008-09.