Pa. public schools improve scores on statewide tests

HARRISBURG (AP) — Test results released Thursday show that 78 percent of Pennsylvania public schools are meeting federal academic performance targets, an increase of 4 percentage points over last year.

State education officials said 2,443 of 3,115 total schools achieved what is known as “adequate yearly progress” under the No Child Left Behind Act in the 2008-09 school year. That’s up from just under 2,300 in the prior term.

“These results continue to show that Pennsylvania is boosting achievement, and that we’ve got tremendous momentum on our side,” said Gov. Ed Rendell. “Why would we think for a minute of stopping this progress?”

Schools can meet the academic achievement standard in various ways. They can have at least 63 percent of students read at grade level and at least 56 percent at grade level in math, have a 10 percent reduction in students below grade level, or make progress that would have the school reach its targets in two years.

Rendell linked the latest results to increases in spending on education and said they bolstered the case for his proposed $300 million increase in school spending, a major component of the ongoing state budget impasse. The Democratic governor noted that struggling schools that have been targeted for additional state subsidies are reporting some of the most impressive gains in student performance.

“We’re becoming a state that can be proud of its education system and can look to the future to produce a well-educated and disciplined and well-prepared work force that will hold Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania’s economy in good stead for decades and decades to come,” Rendell said.

The governor said the results showed the value of his administration’s efforts to boost pre-K education, full-day kindergarten, after- school tutoring and other “targeted investments.”

“You have never heard me trash No Child Left Behind as a concept,” Rendell said of the federal law. “The problem with No Child Left Behind was that it became the largest unfunded mandate in the history of American government because the Bush administration never funded it at the level President Bush said it would be funded.”

He said flat state funding would result in program cuts because labor and health-care costs will inevitably increase and consume a greater portion of school board budgets. He said even a one-year freeze would have repercussions.

“If you’re one of the children who doesn’t get into Pre-K Counts, you can’t go back next year when you’re in kindergarten and get in,” Rendell said. “You enter kindergarten much less prepared, in so many different ways, to hit the ground running.”

Dave Salter, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, said the signs of progress were encouraging, but the overall results showed some weaknesses in special education and among poorer districts.

“Those seem to be the two areas where we still have some challenges and still have some work to do,” Salter said.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Jake Corman, R-Centre, said the economic slowdown has made spending decisions more difficult.

“This is the challenge we’re all in when we’re facing a recession and less revenues,” he said. “It’s not that any of us are opposed to education spending, it’s those are the revenues we have. And so either you need to fit it in the revenues we have or you need to find new revenues.”

No high-level budget negotiations were announced Thursday. Pennsylvania is now more than two months into its fiscal year without a state budget deal in place.