PA residents: No funds left behind, education chief says

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No funds left behind, education chief says

 

No funds left behind, education chief says

State to spend all of federal allocation

Friday, March 26, 2004

By Amy McConnell, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

 

The state's Republicans in Congress who want to know why Gov. Ed Rendell is

sitting on nearly $100 million in federal education funds got their answer

yesterday from the state's education secretary.

Most of the state's unspent balance has been committed but not yet paid out

to districts, and the remaining $96 million will be spent before the federal

deadline of Sept. 30, according to Secretary of Education Vicki Phillips.

The 12 members of the Republican delegation have criticized Rendell and

other Democrats for claiming that the federal No Child Left Behind Act is

underfunded, even as the Rendell administration fails to spend the federal

money it has.

Those claims, however, are " disingenuous " and distracting to the people who

are trying to make the new law work, Phillips said.

" Having to respond to this again and again makes it very difficult for those

of us who believe the central tenets of this law are worthy and know they

should be protected, but who also know that parts are unworkable and that

funding continues to be a key issue, " said Phillips, who sent her letter of

reply to U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Delaware County, yesterday afternoon.

All states have 27 months in which to spend their federal funds, giving

Pennsylvania officials until the end of September to spend federal education

money they received on July 1, 2002.

States can draw on federal funds only after a school district spends the

money and bills the state; the remaining $96 million from 2002 will be spent

by the end of September as those bills arrive, according to Phillips.

No Child Left Behind, which was first proposed by President Bush, demands

reading and math proficiency from all students -- including special

education students and those learning English as a second language -- by

2014.

While the law passed with broad bipartisan support, many state and federal

lawmakers of both parties, along with school administrators and parents,

have begun to criticize how it is being carried out.

One of those critics is U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the likely

Democratic presidential nominee. Although Kerry joined 86 other senators in

voting for the measure, he now argues on the campaign trail that Bush

fumbled its implementation and failed to give states enough money.

Because state officials have not been able to calculate the cost of carrying

out the law, there is no way of knowing whether it is underfunded in

Pennsylvania, Phillips said. This week, she said, Pennsylvania joined a

consortium of states developing a standardized form to help them calculate

the costs of implementing the law, which ultimately will require students in

every grade to be tested in reading and math.

On March 16, Weldon and the other 11 Republican members of Pennsylvania's

congressional delegation wrote to Rendell and asked why the state had failed

to use more than $156 million in federal education funding as of Jan. 6 --

an amount that since has fallen to $96 million.

Weldon could not be reached for comment yesterday, but his chief of staff,

Mike Connallen, pointed out that the administration -- now by its own

admission -- has enough money to pay for schools through September, and has

more money coming.

The Republicans' letter, he said, was a direct response to criticisms by

Rendell and other Democrats in late February that Bush and Republicans in

Congress have not spent enough to implement No Child Left Behind.

In January, the White House and federal Education Department officials

charged that the 50 states, along with the District of Columbia and eight

territories, have $5.75 billion in unused federal money from the 2000-02

period, according to The Associated Press.

" According to your own letter, you are fully funded through September '04,

not including the '03 and '04 funds that are on their way to you, so don't

sit there and criticize us for not funding No Child Left Behind, " Connallen

said in response to Phillips' letter.

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