More Schools Achieve "AYP"

Governor Ed Rendell announced that nearly eight in ten Pennsylvania schools are meeting federal performance targets, Adequate Yearly Progress as part of the No Child Left Behind Act. He then immediately leveraged the news into ammunition in an ongoing state budget impasse.
78 percent of Pennsylvania schools cleared federal achievement standards. That’s a four percent increase from last year’s figures. The governor claims that’s a direct result of his push for increased education funding.
The governor says he won’t back down on his demand for a 300 million dollar basic education subsidy increase in this year’s budget.

"We’ve come so far, we’ve come so fast. We have momentum on our side. Why would we think for a minute of stopping this process? We won’t. We’re going to continue to fight for education investments. We’ve going to continue to try each and every year to make the costing out study a reality."

Pennsylvania’s top Republican, Senate President Pro Tem Joseph Scarnati, says while he applauds the results, there’s no money for a big boost right now.

"Nobody’s going to stand here, including myself, and argue that you have to have adequate funding. But the point of the matter, and we keep saying, is we are in very difficult times. Would we like to fund more? We’d like to fund a lot of things more. But we have to be responsible in how we spread those dollars out."

Scarnatti says it “won’t be nuclear winter” if schools get level funding.