September 19, 2005

Regent James R. Tallon Jr                                                     James A. Kadamus
NYS Board of Regents                                                           Deputy Commissioner
350 Fifth Avenue, 23rd floor                                                   NYS Department of Education
New York, NY 10118-0110                                                     Washington Avenue #875 EBA
                                                                                              Albany, NY 12234

Dear Regent Tallon and Deputy Commissioner Kadamus:

The Educational Priorities Panel shares your concern about the student achievement gap between high-need and low-need school districts. Much, but not all, of the Conceptual Proposal contains promising strategies to close this achievement gap.

EPP supports the Proposal’s recommendations with the following reservations:

Restructure State Aid as a foundation program. As described, this foundation program has four moving parts: the cost of educating students; an adjustment for regional cost differences; an adjustment for student needs; and an expected local contribution based on wealth (both property and income) per-pupil within each school district.

            There may be some unintended consequences if this foundation system is adopted. The rapid escalation of property values in the downstate region will pose a particular challenge. Within a few years, there may be higher “expected local contribution” levels for New York City and downstate high-need suburban school districts, which now serve a higher proportion of the state’s African-American and Latino/a students than the cities of Yonkers, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. For the immediate future, these downstate suburban districts will appear to be gaining in wealth and their expected local contribution will also grow. While the economies of many upstate areas are declining, their drop in student population may also increase their per-pupil “wealth” and expected contribution levels.

            For these reasons, the Educational Priorities Panel strongly recommends that the Regents 1) eliminate all wealth factors or wealth eligibility in the calculations for student need (Tier 2 and Tier 3 of Flex Aid currently have these wealth calculations); and 2) include a proposal to create a commission made up of education finance experts to revise the foundation formula at regular three-or-five year intervals. The creation of a similar technical review commission is one of the strong points of The Schools for New York’s Future Act. Absent this periodic review by experts, a new set of adjustments may emerge from legislators responding to constituent complaints that will doom this new funding structure to the same set of manipulations that have made the current formulas less than objective.

Restructure special education funding After reviewing various other methods states use to fund services for students with disabilities (flat grant, census, resource, and reimbursement

funding systems), EPP has come to the conclusion that providing additional per-pupil weights has proven to be the best system for preventing cost containment policies from emerging at the state level. Therefore, we support the Conceptual Proposal’s recommendation that special education funding be allocated to districts through weights.

            Your proposal creates two higher weights for students who are educated in private facilities (private excess cost) or whose more severe disabilities require intensive services (high-cost aid). Most funding for special education students, however, will be provided through just one weight. Thus, the proposed funding system has many of the same characteristics of a flat grant or census system. Originally these were championed as funding methods to prevent over referrals and segregated placements, but there is a growing awareness that they have a downside in that they produce a disincentive for districts to provide special education services.

            In order for this Regents proposal to succeed, EPP recommends that it be accompanied by an accountability proposal that allays the fears of parents and advocates that special education service levels will be reduced. These fears are not unfounded, especially in New York City where there was a $300 million reduction in special education funding in 2004 compounded by an elimination of community school district oversight of special education programs. The reduction in services was documented by the NYC Public Advocate amid widespread reports of the placement of special education students in general education classrooms with few supports and pressure by some principals to delay or stop referrals to special education. Over the course of these last two years, the NYC Department of Education has restored much of this funding and has worked to establish regional safeguards to ensure services for children at the school level. Restructuring at the city level, geared to the ideal of providing principals with more responsibility for special education and to discourage segregated placements, had unintended consequences.

            State education officials have frequently commented that parents and advocates “don’t understand special education funding.” In actuality, the situation is far worse than a lack of knowledge. Lately, the EPP office has begun to get calls asking for a reaction to Internet articles that allege that there is widespread corruption in the use of special education funding. These accusations are being widely circulated because they provide an explanation to some parents for the discrepancy between newspaper reports about the $1.4 billion spent for special education services in New York City and their inability to secure services for their child.

            It is ironic that special education requires so much paperwork and data collection, but so little cogent information is available. Apple-and-oranges comparisons abound, including comparisons of testing outcomes of districts with dramatically different proportions of students in special education. The accountability measure that EPP recommends accompany any restructuring of special education funding needs to be based on the provision of more meaningful and transparent data on special education services and outcomes in New York State. Thomas Parrish and his co-authors of a 2003 study for the Center for Special Education Finance conclude that no current funding system, including pupil weights, is geared to improving special education outcomes and, furthermore, that in most states there is a dearth of reliable data that would allow researchers to evaluate how funding, service levels, and student outcomes are related to each other. In short, creating one weight for most special education children is a plan to simplify funding and remove incentives for segregated placements, but beyond this we don’t see in the Conceptual Proposal a plan to improve the outcomes of students with disabilities.

            The state of Vermont publishes statewide data on staffing levels for special education services. EPP was pleased to learn that the NYS Department of Education collects similar data for its PD 6 Form (Report of Personnel Employed or Needed to Provide Special Education and Related Services to Students with Disabilities). Making this data public, as does Vermont, would provide parents in each school and BOCES district with a snapshot of current service levels. In short, restructuring special education funding by itself is insufficient to bring about better outcomes. The Regents need to begin to ask for more reliable and evaluative information from the Department on services and outcomes.

Strengthen Accountability for the use of funds As noted in the preceding section, there is a lack of an accountability provision for special education. Only the Student Data Information System (SDIS) would directly address the issue of securing more information on student outcomes. The NYC Board of Education developed a similar individual student tracking system in 1992, yet ten years later an audit by NYC Comptroller Hevesi was unable to use this system to track the outcomes of English Language Learners after four years because the data proved unreliable. A contributing problem is that this system did not reliably track whether students were placed in English-as-a-second-language programs or bilingual programs. Protocols need to be developed for SDIS to capture the wide variety of program models that many students, especially in high-need districts, are subjected to and, just as important, the limited duration of many of these programs.

            EPP continues to be confused by the statement that “…We will be able to measure the benefit of using smaller class sizes with certain groups of students. Such programs often involve the allocation of billions of education dollars without reliable data on their impact on student achievement.” Advocates in New York City are seeking to reduce class sizes to the average for students in the rest of the state. Are you proposing to study whether small class sizes in more affluent districts have some relationship to improved student outcomes in these communities? Are the Regents seeking to raise the average class sizes in the rest of the state?

            If the SDIS system will be used to study the benefit of smaller classes in high-need districts, two highly respected studies have been done in Tennessee and Wisconsin that have been subjected to extensive peer review. They show a definite correlation between small class size in the early grades and student achievement, especially for low-income children. The Technical Supplement to the Tennessee STAR study also shows a clear reduction in referrals to special education. On the other hand, if the proposed study to be undertaken is to determine whether small class sizes in remediation programs are effective, this data also exists. For two years following the 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the NYC Board of Education produced reports on the outcomes of Title 1 students receiving remediation services in small groups. In general, testing gains made in some remediation programs were cancelled out by testing declines in other programs. Once children experience academic failure, smaller classes are an insufficient intervention. The limited success of remediation programs is one of the reasons advocates in New York City parents and advocates are seeking smaller classes in all the early grades so that there are fewer children in need of these interventions.

Regional services for the Big Five City school districts The Educational Priorities Panel supports providing BOCES funding to the NYC school district.

Strengthening Preschool Education The Educational Priorities Panel strongly supports expanding preschool education. However, we have three questions about the Conceptual Proposal’s recommendations.

1) In an earlier draft, it was noted that several high-achieving districts do not offer kindergarten or only offer half-day kindergarten. What is the student achievement profile of the 8 percent of the state’s school districts that do not offer full-day kindergarten?

2) What are the consequences for mandating attendance in kindergarten for student suspensions? Data shows that nationwide there are three times the suspension rate for kindergarten students than for those in the higher grades. Most of these students return to their homes. If attendance is mandatory, will suspensions require alternative placements of these young children?

3) Does the Regents recommendation for a separate foundation-like aid formula for pre-kindergarten include funding for school bus transportation and Building Aid? Especially in rural areas, the lack of transportation makes it difficult for low-income families to access pre-kindergarten programs. In urban areas, the lack of space and cost of building limits the expansion of pre-kindergarten programs.

            The Educational Priorities Panel would like to see these questions answered as these proposals are more fully described. At this point, EPP favors requiring all school districts to offer full-day kindergarten, but we are opposed to making attendance mandatory in this grade.

We also want to reiterate that there needs to be more oversight over early childhood education. Though EPP has not monitored these programs, we have found in school site visits that while higher-achieving elementary schools provide blocks and other play experiences to young children and have a developmental approach to learning, in contrast, low-achieving schools have a dearth of play equipment and play opportunities and are subjecting four-year olds to a narrow educational program more suited to children who are older. In one school, EPP staff witness four-years olds being asked to subtract numbers. Their listless and sad demeanor was understandable. The only “play equipment” they seemed to have were coloring books, which also struck us as highly inappropriate for four-year olds.

Simplified cost allowance for state Building Aid The Educational Priorities Panel does not fully understand this proposal.

            Our assumption is that the proposed formula is for new construction projects, not capital repair projects. Is this assumption correct? This year, the legislature approved two reforms in Building Aid. The first is  a 3 percent “bump up” in Building Aid for high-need school districts, yet the formula as proposed by the Regents does not have a need factor. Is this an oversight or is there an assumption that this modest need factor should be eliminated? The second reform is a recognition that cost allowances need to be raised for districts in dense, urban environments where multi-storied buildings are the norm. Will the “allowed cost per square foot” be adjusted to reflect these higher costs of building? EPP recommends that these two recent reforms in Building Aid be reflected in the Regents Building Aid proposal.

Sincerely,

Marilyn Braveman
Chairperson

Noreen Connell
Executive Director

CC NYS Board of Regents

 

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