STATE BUDGET INFO

November 16, 2006

NYS Assembly Education Committee Hearing

on The Future of New York State's Public Education System

Hamilton Hearing Room B, LOB

Albany, NY

            As a coalition of 22 member organizations that work together to drive more resources to the classroom for the benefit of children, the Educational Priorities Panel has no position on governance issues. EPP was neither for or against mayoral control of the public school system in New York City. This is our position today. But I am here to say on behalf of the coalition that there is a need for a mid-course correction in some areas, such as 1) the prevention of supplanting of tax-levy funding; 2) ensuring data integrity; and 3) standard setting.

            Four years ago, civic groups did not understand that the change in governance would be accompanied by a corporate style of governance, with its pluses and minuses:

• A plus is that the New York City school district is change oriented. Initiatives are plentiful. There is an explosion of new schools. The bureaucracy keeps being re-structured. High-priced consultants are brought in to analyze long-standing problem areas. The larger business community is partnering with the school system in myriad ways, and there is a new optimism about improving student outcomes and educational opportunities.

• A minus is that a corporate style of governance, we have learned, often results in communication that is really a form of marketing. All top school officials say the same two or three slogans. There is little interest in an exchange of points of view. Input is solicited through focus groups or through the formal designation of a “partnership” relationship.

Some of EPP’s coalition members are critics of this marketing style of communication while other members of EPP have, in fact, been designated partners and are pleased to be participating directly in the creation of new initiatives.

            There are only two points of consensus among our coalition members as to the downside of the new corporate style of school governance in New York City, and this pertains to our function as a monitor of the education budget and its impact on school children: 1) budget data is now treated as proprietary information and 2) accountability is so narrowly focused on student test outcomes that principals are not held to other standards, including standards set by state lawmakers in budget agreements or, more importantly, long-held standards set by an overwhelming consensus of educators about best practices. Simply put, there is a lack of transparency as to the use of taxpayer funding and education decision making. Both as advocates for students and as taxpayers, we ask for improved oversight in three areas:

1) Prevention of supplanting In 1997, the Educational Priorities Panel was a strong supporter of LADDER, even in the face of criticism by Mayor Giuliani that these funds for class-size reduction in the early grades and pre-kindergarten programs could be better used to make the STAR tax-relief program fairer for New York City residents. Almost a decade later, EPP has to admit that that the “trade” between tax reductions for largely suburban/rural homeowners and lower class sizes in the early grades for urban school children has turned out poorly. For seven years the New York City school system has gotten an additional $88 million a year to reduce class sizes from kindergarten to third grade from an average of twenty-five students to an average of twenty students. As of the 2004-05 school year, according to a March 16 NYS Comptroller audit (NYC Department of Education Administration of the Early Grade Class Size Reduction Program, 2005-N-3) this $88 million resulted in reducing class size for just twenty classes above local tax-levy levels for early-grade teachers. To do the math for you, this state investment is equivalent to $4.4 million per classroom.

            Here is another calculation. From the 2000-01 school year up to the 2002-03 school year, the NYC Board of Education used half of its class size reduction allocation to supplant its own funding for tax-levy teachers. This is equivalent to a three-year loss of $132 million that could have been used as a state deduction by New York City taxpayers. Since mayoral control, over the course of the last four school years, supplanting of CSR funding increased from fifty percent to ninety-four percent, equivalent to the use of $83 million a year to pay tax-levy teacher salaries. All told, city residents have lost $464 million in potential state tax relief since the LADDER program was implemented. School officials have hinted that since CSR fell under the “shares” agreement, there was no need to hire additional teachers to reduce class sizes below 25 students. They are wrong. New York City may still have gotten only its usual 38 percent slice of additional school aid, but the entire “pie” was increased by CSR funding. These funds could have gone to urban taxpayers as STAR benefits, as recommended by Mayor Giuliani. In the meantime, city school children are still being taught in the largest class sizes in the state.

            Whether one agrees with the classroom counting methodology of the NYS Comptroller’s audit or not, the fact remains that the audit documents that a random examination of fifty-four schools found that twenty-six principals used CSR funds to supplant their tax-levy payroll for teachers. Have there been any consequences for false statements by these principals? Is there a corrective action plan for the New York City school system? EPP is still awaiting some effort to prevent this obvious supplanting of CSR funds and, so far, there has been no action.

            A recent study conducted by Columbia Teachers College (The Money Train: The Social Distribution of Expenditures in New York City Public Schools, Aaron Pallas & Jennifer Booher-Jennings, August 2006 presentation to the American Sociological Association) found a widespread pattern of supplanting at the elementary school level in New York City public schools. A 1997 study by EPP made the same finding, so this pattern is not new. What is new is that the NYC Department of Education is no longer consistently reporting how Title 1 funds are distributed throughout the system. Why does this matter? Obviously, the failure to provide information on the systemwide allocation of federal Title 1 funds obscured the declining proportion allocated to high-poverty schools through per-capita funding until the recent 2006-07 increase. Nevertheless, it could be argued that the centrally created programs funded by Title 1 — such as, instructional coaches for schools and summer school programs to prevent students from being held back another grade — are targeted to schools and students. But a full accounting of centrally controlled Title 1 funds has not been reported except for the 2004-05 school year. How expensive is Mayor Bloomberg’s summer school program for low-scoring students if both tax levy and federal and state funds are combined? What proportion goes to charter schools? These questions cannot be answered any longer from public budget documents.

            Yet another issue is that top administrators are using Title 1 to fund many of their initiatives rather than securing additional tax levy funding from the city. This is particularly true for instructional coaches. In high-poverty schools, Title 1 is used to fund these positions. In non-Title 1 schools, city tax-levy and additional state funds are used to pay the salaries of instructional coaches. The whole concept of targeted categorical funding has been subverted. The city is providing more of its tax-levy funding for instructional coaches for schools not serving high-poverty students and no extra funds for Title 1 schools.

Recommendation: Education Law was amended in 1974 to comply with government accounting standards and to require the Board of Education, newly under community control, to provide the public with information on how tax dollars are distributed to community districts. Reporting of allocations to 1,400 schools, newly under mayoral control, does not provide system-wide transparency as to how categorical funds are being used. The 1974 standards must be re-introduced. More importantly, when a pattern of supplanting is uncovered, there must be corrective action. If the legislature fails to take action, how are taxpayers and parents to know if extra funds for education in New York City will result in better instruction and more services? This is a particularly important question when it comes to any Campaign for Fiscal Equity remedy.

2) Data Integrity This problem is not new and it has been particularly prevalent in information about the education of English Language Learners, special education services, class sizes, teacher staffing, and high school graduation rates. But the problem of questionable data has become more serious in these areas. On the eve of a possible restructuring of education finance, some benchmarks need to be established so there can be a measurement of progress towards adequacy. I will restrict myself to examples from special education. EPP has been a strong supporter of the inclusion of more children with disabilities into general education classrooms. Unfortunately, inclusion classrooms have become “the model” for special education instruction, even when it has been deemed an inappropriate setting for some children. EPP has gotten second-hand, but reliable, reports that some principals are unilaterally changing Individual Education Plans to eliminate restrictions on instructional placements. These reports are worrisome. Why bother with IEP assessments?

            The NYC Department of Education issued a September 2005 report by Dr. Thomas Hehir, Comprehensive Management Review and Evaluation of Special Education, that documents many long-standing data problems in special education. Yet Dr. Hehir refers to state data on special education staffing to assert that New York City’s special education staff-to-student ratios are higher than school districts in the rest of the state. EPP has found that there is little correspondence between these reported staffing levels and expenditures for special education. The NYC Comptroller’s audit of city expenditures showed a $445 million decrease in expenditures for special education during the 2003-04 school year. Yet there was only a decrease of 564 special education staff positions in New York City public schools in that same year as reported to the state for its PD-6 report. City education budget officials allege that there was a coding error in their budget expenditure reports. This may be true. But during this same year, there were widespread reports by school-level psychologists to the NYC Public Advocate’s office that they were unable or dissuaded from making referrals to special education. The Deputy Chancellor for Instruction and Learning made special education compliance a major objective in 2003-04 and 2004-05. We appreciate her efforts. But there still remains a lack of congruence between staffing data and expenditure data for these two years.

Recommendation: EPP has no interest in embroiling the Department of Education into a massive data gathering effort, but surely the staff of the Assembly, the NYS Department of Education, and the NYC Department of Education can come to some agreement as to key benchmarks in the five problem areas mentioned above that can be tested for reliability. For example, on high school graduation rates, four-year cohort reports are misleading, especially since New York City has such rigorous course requirements for high school students. There is a need for seven-year cohort reports as well as a breakout of “discharge” statistics for each school.

3) Standard Setting On behalf of EPP member organizations, we want to again thank the Assembly for securing the funding requested by the Mayor for the 2005-09 capital plan and for the progress you have made in making Building Aid reimbursements fairer to urban school districts. EPP is in the process of analyzing the 2006 legislative budget agreement around capital funding for the schools in New York City. It is already clear to us that the objectives of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity BRICKS facilities plan were not met. The courts clearly ruled that “adequate school facilities” constituted a plan to eliminate overcrowding, to create more classrooms so class sizes could be reduced, and to upgrade specialized facilities, such as libraries and science labs. The current capital plan includes no upgrades of libraries and newly proposed amendments to the plan reduce the number of new schools.

            Reviewing these court decisions since 2001 has been illuminating in that there is an expectation expressed in each opinion that the state will establish more concrete and measurable objectives in crafting a remedy. EPP urges the Assembly to meet this expectation. Without articulated goals and measurable standards, “input” and “accountability” become paper exercises. If the only measure of accountability becomes test scores, ironically, New York City schools will not catch up to schools in the rest of the state. Developmentally appropriate instruction, smaller class sizes, a well-rounded curriculum, and access to school libraries, arts programs, and sports all contribute to better student outcomes, especially in the higher grades.

            Teaching to the test only works up to fourth grade. Even then, it is questionable as to whether subjecting five-year olds to a first-grade curriculum has improved test scores. The highest-ranking nations in international reading assessments are the Scandinavian countries where formal reading and math subjects are not introduced until second grade. EPP has yet to find any research finding that links early acquisition of reading to mastery of reading. Instead, the preponderance of research on early childhood education shows that play is an important learning process for young children under the age of seven. Yet EPP members have learned or have directly witnessed on numerous occasions that “the flow of the day” in many kindergartens has eliminated playtime or restricted it to twenty minutes. What research supports this radical experiment in subjecting young children to reading and writing exercises and math problems when most of them are still developing eye and hand coordination skills and attempting to understand numbers? Years ago, when I was a coordinator of child care for another organization and employed in the day care system, there was an effort to identify and eradicate developmentally inappropriate practices, which were largely confined to poorly run centers in a few high-poverty neighborhoods. Now these practices seem to be systemwide under the mistaken belief that they will improve third and fourth grade test scores. When EPP or member organizations have commented on these developmentally inappropriate practices, we are told that these are not condoned. But they are not being curtailed. “Whatever it takes to raise test scores” seems to be the only standards principals are asked to meet.

Recommendation: I want to end by stating that EPP members seek a CFE remedy that results in a successful school system that values each child and provides extra resources to high-need students. A successful school system would mean a plan to improve middle-grade education from grades four to eight. It would mean the retention of more qualified teachers through class size reduction. It would mean a well-rounded curriculum. We are counting on the NYS Assembly to set the these minimum standards for adequacy. Test scores are merely a measurement. As often repeated, you can’t fatten a cow just by putting the cow on a scale. If there are no standards for adequacy, and instead, the only accountability mechanism is test scores, then children in the New York City school system will not be given the resources they need to succeed.

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