Governor Cuomo oftens complains about spending on public schools. But he fails to mention budget cuts and inequitable funding. A new report by the Alliance for Quality Education lays out the facts and their consequences for Néw York’s public schools.
Good report /summary below of funding gap and education cuts since CFE.
New York state’s public schools have suffered devastating budget cuts over the past several years. As is so often the case around the country, the burden is overwhelmingly placed on the students and communities who most need support.
The details of this tragedy are described in a new report released today by the Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) in partnership with Opportunity Action. “Billions Behind: New York State Continues to Violate Students’ Constitutional Rights” does more than illuminate the problem: it also lays out solutions to New York’s school funding crisis.
There is a way to more equitably distribute school aid across the state — it’s a formula called Foundation Aid — but seven years after its unveiling, policymakers in Albany have still refused to fully fund it.
Quality education is a constitutional right for every New York student, a right denied to many children thanks to these budget cuts. As AQE’s Zakiyah Ansari put it, “This report doesn’t just show a funding problem, it’s also a civil rights problem.”
In light of this week’s announcement of a $6.2 billion state budget surplus heading into next year, now is the time to close the funding gap and ensure an opportunity to learn for each and every New York student.
Read the full report here.
Read the press release here.
Opportunity Action
1680 Duke Street | Alexandria, VA 22314
http://www.opportunityaction.org | 703-838-6722
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Mr. Silly Putty governor also knows that my own beloved district is owed somewhere between $36 million and $44 million dollars (accumulated over about 6 years) as a result of Albany’s incompetent handling of its foundation aid formula, an algorithm that drives public school financing from state government.
We have a burgeoning population of low income free and reduced lunch children, and it’s not fair that other much wealthier surrounding districts with little diversity in their populations received more aid in proportion to their demographics than my district, which is one the finest LEAs a child can attend in the country.
Wendy Lecker, a true hero, can speak more about this . . . .
Meanwhile, my district generates ever more academic and instructional excellence while doing with less, but there is a threshhold thay once crossed, produces counterproductivity and possibly a point of diminishing returns.
To boot, this is OUR NY state taxpayer money from OUR incomes that should be coming back to us appropriately instead of getting stuck in a vast vacuum of tax breaks for Michael Bloomberg’s Martha Stewart’s estates in Westchester . . .
Goodness. . . . even the upper middle class in Westchester county are feeling the effects of the overclass state government.
Crossposted with this commentary: http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Billions-Behind-New-York-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Action_Budget_Constitutional-Crisis_Crisis-140812-196.html
As usual, I got to see this report because I get a feed from the Diane Ravitch blog, so that I can know what is afoot not just in NYC but in the 15,5880 districts in 50 states.
I say, Thanks Diane for ensuring that we the people know what is happening as the billionaires club of oligarchs continue their assault on the bedrock of our democracy… an educated citizenry.
Diane Ravitch says at her blog: “There is a way to more equitably distribute school aid across the state — it’s a formula called Foundation Aid — but seven years after its unveiling, policymakers in Albany have still refused to fully fund it.
“Quality education is a constitutional right for every New York student, a right denied to many children thanks to these budget cuts. As AQE’s Zakiyah Ansari put it, ‘This report doesn’t just show a funding problem, it’s also a civil rights problem.’ ”
“In light of this week’s announcement of a $6.2 billion state budget surplus heading into next year, now is the time to close the funding gap and ensure an opportunity to learn for each and every New York student.”
Read the full report here.
Read the press release here.
Opportunity Action
1680 Duke Street | Alexandria, VA 22314
http://www.opportunityaction.org | 703-838-6722
I seldom agree with Ms. Ravitch but the our dysfunctional public school do discriminate against the poor and disadvantaged! It should be a civil rights issue and I’m amazed someone hasn’t won a court ruling that requires schools to spend the extra time and money necessary to bring all kids up to a (minimum) standard in reading, writing and arithmetic before they graduate! Virtually all curricula require it now. Mastery ‘at grade level’ is already required and schools everywhere ignore it or dumb down their ‘state standards’ so parents aren’t embarrassed and schools aren’t challenged.
It seems so obvious! Overly ambitious “No Child Left Behind” legislation passed almost 15 years ago was (intentionally?) so poorly designed and implemented it disappeared from view. Recently introduced “Common Core” standards similarly designed to insure fewer (poor and disadvantaged) kids ‘fall through the cracks’ have proven so intimidating to teachers they’re being ‘withdrawn’.
Millions of kids graduate from our public every year without the basic skills to succeed in school or in life. Good jobs are out there but they require what this ‘underclass’ doesn’t have. The ability to read and write well enough to ‘successfully’ complete a job application or successful ‘comprehend’ a manual describing the operation of a piece of equipment. They say if kids don’t ‘master’ reading, writing and math at the 6th grade level before they go to middle school they will always struggle…in school and in life. We have to come up with enough money to pay teachers to help these disadvantaged kids after school, on Saturdays and all summer if needed. Failure shouldn’t be an option.
Kent, you should agree with Ms. Ravitch more and learn a thing or two.
But that’s besides the point.
Here’s a point I’d like to make.
A New York court declared that my district was indeed owed money. The ruling was made almost 7 years ago. Wendy Lecker can best describe what happened.
However, the court does not have any legal or constitutional authority to seize funds from the state government, as it would in other types of cases that involve pecuniary interests owed.
The state has therefore broken the law for all this time.
Meanwhile, the state and federal governments continue to allow the resident prince, known as Wall Street, to enjoy all sorts of tax breaks and advantages while my school needs more space to open up full day pre-k and extend our nursery school program for children at risk.
This is all a civil rights issue, and the feds look the other way with regard to the money owed to my district because its not in THEIR jurisdiction.
The state looks the other way because we have a horrible reptilian anti-public school governor who makes a great white shark look cuddly.
The bordering districts who are wealthier than ours look the other way because, well, they’ve gotten theirs, and “theirs” turned out to be a state funding that was disproprtionately higher than that given to our district considering ours has a giant number of free and reduced lunch children compared to them. Asking these other districts to fork over their overages to our district would probably get us laughed at in the face. Instead, the state is incentivizing municipalities to battle it out amongst themselves in consolidating school districts and tax bases. That would be a joke and a half given that our very wealthy neighboring town has a much higher mean and median per capita income than our town. We would be raised up, and they, with school funding, would be lowered down somewhat, but it would equalize finances to a considerable extent. However, good luck in getting the wealthier, hardly diverse adjacent school district to merge with ours. . . . .
In the meantime, our current contract calls for one raise, I believe, for one out of 4 or 5 years, and it’s less than half of one percent. Healthcare costs go up, and our pension contributions have been raised (from our paychecks, and I would only expect us educators to be contributing more to both! Taxpayers cannot foot the bills as they have in the past. I too am a homeowner and pay taxes.) Yet, if we had a nationalized healthcare system, this would not be an issue in terms of where the funds come from to pay for healthcare.
And just think about Michael Bloomberg wanting to put 50 or more students in a classroom, K-12, with one really better paid, high quality teacher. . . . He stated at a press conference that the kids, teachers, and taxpayers in public schools would benefit in a win-win situation. For that kind of billionaire disconnect, I hope his major arteries clog and clog and clog and clog . . . . .
Just remember what Picketty said about where sort of thing will lead to of unresolved . . . . .
Kent Harris,
“We have to come up with enough money to pay teachers to help these disadvantaged kids after school, on Saturdays and all summer if needed. Failure shouldn’t be an option.”
We don’t have to come up with the money. The money is there. The equity isn’t. We have to make our elected officials give it up and raise taxes on the very wealthy.
“Failure shouldn’t be an option”
You’re right Kent. Just something as simple a getting rid of the “A-F grading” scale instantly eliminates that problem.
Oh, Diane, the script indicates you’re supposed to say “stop throwing money at the problem!”
I’m never sure if “the problem” they’re identifying is our kids or our public schools.
I don’t really consider them “the problem”. I suspect “the problem” might be traced directly to the governor’s office, if one were actually interested in finding “solutions”.
Well . . .
The median district per-pupil expenditure in New York State is $22,000; the mean $19,558, almost twice the national average. This is the highest per-pupil spending level of all the states by a decent margin, even as New York is only 15th in median household income. Instructional wages and benefits are also the highest in the country.
The lowest-spending districts, most of which are in rural areas with a lower cost of living, still spend in excess of $14,000 per student. Few districts have seen actual cuts in per-pupil spending year-over-year. And what the report leaves out is that the highest-need districts receive Federal aid, which keeps their total expenditures at or near the state median (Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Yonkers) or even quite a bit above it (NYC DOE). Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse schools actually spend quite a bit more per student than their leafy suburban counterparts.
I’m all for high-needs districts getting their fair share and for court rulings to be enforced. But there are reasons why Andrew Cuomo’s poll numbers are bulletproof despite his spectacularly corrupt and mostly ineffective governorship, and his signature property tax cap is one of them. It is hard to look at these spending numbers (along with the enormous tax burden carried by ordinary NYers, not just 1 or even 10%ers) and conclude that a lack of money is the problem.
Tim,
The money is there. The equity is not.
“The money is there.”
Where?
FLERP!,
PS 321 seems to fund five arts teachers through PTA fundraising (http://www.ps321.org/resources/fundraising/why-our-fundraising-is-important). In 2012 they seem to have raised a little under $980,000 dollars (http://nccsdataweb.urban.org/orgs/profile/113329711?popup=1).
Perhaps more money can be found for other public schools using their techniques.
Where is the money, FLERP?
Part of it is in Bloomberg’s 28 billion dollar personal fortune. Or maybe Martha Stewart’s 14 homes she owns, or perhaps Rupert Murdoch’s penthouse pad he snapped up in Manhattan at $44 million dollars.
There are some 15 billionaires residing in Manhattan (part time) whose combined wealth is more than 3 times the operating budget for New York City, all 5 boroughs.
Where have you been, FLERP?
Get off the computer, turn off Duck Dynasty and take a look at stagnating wages of the average worker in NY City.
Take some of the snot out of your nose so that you can better wake up and smell the inequity . . . . . .
Robert, I think you and Diane may be using different definitions of “there.” Tim said that New York spends a lot of money on education, and that it’s difficult to look at that high spending, and New York’s high tax rates, “and conclude that a lack of money is the problem.” Diane responded that “[t]he money is there,” but “[t]he equity is not.” I took to mean that New York doesn’t need to spend more money on education (and thus doesn’t need to raise more revenue through increased taxes) to fix this problem, but rather just needs to apportion its existing spending differently. In other words, I understood Diane to be saying that the money is “there,” i.e., already in the budget and funded by existing revenue. My question to Diane was where is this money in the budget, and what re-allocations would solve the problem of funding disparities. By contrast, when you say the money is “there,” you appear to mean that the money is not in the budget and has not been funded by existing revenue, but rather is in the possession of extraordinarily rich people. That’s not what I understood Diane to be saying.
No, Flerp, I’m pretty sure that “equity” is shorthand for saying it would be a tragic catastrophe to ask the Bronxvilles and Oyster Bays to spend less than $30,000 per kid, so everyone else needs to be brought up to that level at a minimum. “Wall Street’s” GOT this!
Hi Kent Harris:
Your conclusion, “… Failure shouldn’t be an option.” is quite illogical. If I correctly remember a proverb which expresses as “failure is mother of success”.
I hope that you agree with me regarding “people only learn and enjoy learning,listening whenever they are in the happy state of mind.” For this sole reason, in any society, if educators are fear for their welfare in teaching democratic human rights of acceptance of failure as mother of success, then the young generation will only learn to submit and confirm to “NO OPTION” as the dead-end solution.
Have you ever had an opportunity to communicate with children? Where are your creative mind, Mr. Harris? Back2basic
Utah is usually hailed as the state with one of the most equitable funding schemes in the country. Most of the money for districts in Utah comes from the state, so every student, theoretically, gets the same amount of money.
In the last year, however, as I have talked with colleagues, I have begun to realize that equal funding from the state still means that poorer schools are shortchanged. In my district, we have a wealthy south end and a middle to lower class north end. Ever since I was a child in this same district, this has been the case, and the policies and funding have always seemed to favor the south end.
I have now realized why. Because Utah has such low per pupil expenditures, secondary schools rely heavily on student fees (elementary schools cannot charge fees). Therefore, schools with lower levels of poverty begin with far higher amounts of money than schools like mine, which have a large number of students in poverty, and therefore have large numbers of fee waivers. The district does not make up the difference. So while the south end schools have all the buses they need for field trips, I have to take my students on public transit, which is free. South end schools never have to worry about having basic supplies, while I have to buy my own tissues, copy paper, and more. Equal funding isn’t the answer. EQUITABLE funding, so that schools with high levels of poverty are able to deal with the concerns that students in poverty have, IS what is needed.
Threatened,
In essence you have your own version local funding, but it happens within the district through differential fees rather than between districts amused by differences in property values.
What is the district policy on students transferring between schools? I imagine there would be some attraction for north end kids to go to the wealthier schools.
I urge readers of this blog to take any figure purporting to show “per pupil spending” with a healthy dose of reasonable skepticism—and demand the kind of transparency in data that the leading charterites/privatizers fear and loathe.
For example, want to show that a NYC public school is underutilized? Just count every room used as a storeroom and office space and the auditorium and the gym and such like. Bingo! Colocation is on the way! *Caveat: just don’t do the same thing with the charter colocation; they never have enough room for excellence. Capiche?
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Want to show that the average Chicago PS teacher makes $77,000@year? Just include the salaries of every educrat and administrator and consultant and the like sitting in air-conditioned offices that has a teaching credential—current or expired or perhaps even imaginary—and count their six figure salaries in with those lazy LIFO classroom educators who have the nerve to spend their own monies on classroom needs. Voilá! Numbers will dance to your tune.
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And then there’s always that “lump the SpecEd kids in with the regular ed kids” sleight-of-hand. Just average (mean) the spending. Oh, and deferred maintenance and the like? Hey, if you can’t massage and torture numbers and stats for personal pleasure and profit, what’s the use of livin’ la vida loca?
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A healthy antidote to such numerical poison pills are a number of blogs, including the following (and heartfelt apologies to those not mentioned): Jersey Jazzman, deutsch29 [aka Dr. Mercedes Schneider aka KrazyMathLady], Bruce Baker, Gary Rubenstein, GF Brandenburg, and Audrey Amrein-Beardsley.
“A good decision is based on knowledge not on numbers.” [Plato]
And it’s also based on personal and professional integrity, as evidenced in the above mentioned bloggers.
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Repeating my comment from another post:
“School finance is, by far, the biggest priority the groups identified, and the report summary echoes a lot of what the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) has argued in its piece of the everlasting school finance lawsuit: that Texas’ school funding is based on what lawmakers want to spend, not what a quality education actually costs, and that cuts in school funding have meant scaling back bilingual education programs.”
from: http://www.texasobserver.org/latino-education-agenda-more-money-better-teachers/
That’s it in a nutshell, “funding is based on what lawmakers want to spend, not what a quality education actually costs” …