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Standards

Winter 1999 (v3#2)
Community Service Society's Recommendations

Incoming teachers for the state’s schools must be prepared to teach curriculum based on the new standards. To ensure this, the Regents needs to immediately establish a State Professional Standards and Practices Board. The Regents-appointed Committee on Teacher Training missed its deadline of spring 1998 to set up this body. Further, the Regents should implement recommendations from the Committee on Teacher Training which would increase the supply of highly-skilled professionals to the state’s public schools.

To learn properly, New York’s pupils must have safe, adequate building space. State and city leaders have yet to allocate funds to repair or rebuild school buildings, despite well-publicized accounts of their deplorable conditions. Furthermore, the new standards necessitate upgrades to the public education infrastructure, such as modern science laboratories and increased capacity to access technology.

"Early grade class size reduction," a state-mandated program, must be fully implemented. Gains made in small classes in the early grades have been shown to last through high school and could, therefore, enhance students’ ability to achieve higher standards. The city or the state or both must allocate resources for additional space, because without actual space the city Board of Education cannot access state Department of Education grants for additional teachers and classroom materials. And since state grants will cover only part of the new classroom startup costs, the Board of Education must also fund the remaining classrooms needed to bring early grades to an average size of 20 pupils citywide. The City Council and the Mayor must make sure that the Board of Education budget includes sufficient funds to provide for smaller class size.

The Governor and members of the legislature must appropriate one-time capital costs of roughly $2.1 billion above existing state school aid, including $916 million for New York City, to provide adequate facilities. Approximately $1.4 billion, with $625 million for New York City, must be initially allocated for professional development, materials, programs and new staff.

As a prerequisite to meeting the new standards the Governor and the state legislature should dismantle the cumbersome and inequitable existing school aid formulas. Furthermore, since the Governor’s STAR (School Tax Relief) program provides the most funding to school districts with the least need, it should be repealed. Instead, school aid formulas should explicitly incorporate environmental and regional cost differences.

The Regents must establish realistic time frames for meeting the new graduation standards. One way they could do this would be to extend beyond the year 2001 – the current deadline – the time during which a passing grade of 55 instead of 65 will be accepted on the exit exam. The Regents should explore additional measures to prevent students from failing to graduate when school districts are not prepared for the higher standards.

The reader should call or write members of the state Assembly or Senate or the Governor to encourage them to act on the recommendations listed here.

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