Public Testimony 2004

New York City Council Commission on CFE Implementatoin Hearing Testimony

Given by: Noreen Connell, Executive Director for the Educational Priorities Panel
September 29, 2004 City Hall, New York

Good afternoon. My name is Noreen Connell, Executive Director of the Educational Priorities Panel. The goal of EPP is to improve the quality of public education for New York City’s children so that there is no longer a performance gap between city schools and those in the rest of the state. EPP pursues this goal by seeking reforms of budget and administrative practices affecting children. Thank you for holding this hearing today.

The Governor and the Legislature failed to come to an agreement on the CFE remedy. Questions about the remedy required to provide New York City students with access to a sound, basic education are now once again before the Court. There are three key questions before the Panel of Referees that will be the focus of my testimony, 1) Cost, 2) Compliance, and
3) Remedy.

Cost: What cost estimate for providing "a sound, basic education" for New York City students will the Court accept?

EPP supports an increase of $5.8 billion to the City’s school system’s budget to implement the Court’s decision. This is close to the cost estimate presented to the Court by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity ($5.6 billion at the end of four years). CFE has provided a modest estimate that falls within the range offered by other representatives of the State, the NYS Board of Regents ($4.7 billion annually at the end of the phase-in period of seven years) and the NYS Assembly ($5.6 billion annually at the end of the phase-in period of five years).

We argue in EPP’s amicus brief that the Defendants have complied in providing estimates of costs through a study by Standard & Poor’s. Among the study’s many scenarios, the Defendants’ estimate of the additional resources needed to meet federal accountability standards by 2008 (Targets 2008) is the most meaningful one for three reasons: 1. The student achievement goal falls within the proposed four to five year phase-in period; 2. The NYS Court of Appeals ruling recognized that the federal No Child Left Behind Act already functions as a ready-made system of accountability for student outcomes; 3. The low end of this cost estimate, between $5.32 billion to $7.28 billion, is remarkably similar to the Plaintiffs’ estimate of $5.6 billion needed for City public school students.It should be noted that all of these estimates for New York City were computed on the basis of a state-wide survey of all high-needs districts. As such, they were tailored to come up with a modest price tag that would be agreeable to the Governor and the Legislature. Essentially, these were "win-win" plans that kept estimates for New York City at the low end.

EPP was deeply disappointed that the Governor did not support the modest plans of CFE, the Regents, or the Assembly. We do not understand why elected officials from Long Island and Upstate failed to understand that the adoption of one of these plans offered the only opportunity for addressing the needs of districts outside of New York City. The Court of Appeals ruling could not have been more clear that the Court order pertained to New York City schools, not those in the rest of the state.

Last week, the Panel of Referees singled out the amicus brief submitted by economists William Duncombe and John Yinger of the Maxwell School, Syracuse University. They account for the extra effort that is required to educate students where there are high concentrations of poverty. Using their "full cost index," they estimate that City spending for education would have to double.
This is an exciting development. The Duncombe and Yinger study provides better estimates of urban student needs and regional costs, and it is not geared towards a political compromise. EPP has no way of knowing whether the Court will use their costing-out estimate as the standard for resources needed by New York City school children. If so, the Governor and the Senate may have lost an opportunity to comply with a lower estimate.

I invite you to visit our web site (edpriorities.org) that contains an analysis of the various CFE plans excluding Title 1 funds (listed under State Budget Updates) and a chart that I created with Dr. Joan Scheuer that analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the various plans (listed under the spring/summer issue of EPP Monitor).

Compliance: To what extent will or can the Court impose a remedy on the State? Will the Court also impose a monetary requirement for the City?

EPP is uncertain about whether the Court can require increased funding from the State for the New York City school district and can succeed in securing compliance by the State with this type of Court order. The truth of the matter is that New York State has never had a ruling similar to the CFE decision. These are uncharted waters. How assertive will the Court be? To what extent will the Governor continue to defy, directly or indirectly, a Court order for more education funding for New York City? Will we see a long, drawn-out series of hearings and rulings like Texas and New Jersey experienced or will the parties in the lawsuit come together with a plan they can support? At this point, it is difficult to predict an outcome.

Even without a restructuring of the State’s education finance system, EPP believes that eight highly targeted school aid formulas, if increased each year by an additional $1.4 billion above the City’s annual school aid allocation, will provide $5.8 billion in increase funding for City students by the 2007-08 school year.

This Commission should understand that the Court may also impose a required investment by the City, not just by the State. We argue in EPP’s amicus brief against a Court-imposed City obligation. Our reasoning is that the Defendants have missed an opportunity to set an acceptable balance between increased State resources and increased City resources by failing to adopt a State budget that meets the Court’s requirements. The Court should not attempt to set this balance, which should only be determined by the Legislature, the traditional arbiter of local and State funding responsibilities. The State should carry the full costs of compliance until it avails itself of the opportunity to adopt a State budget that meets the Court’s requirements.

Interestingly, if the City is required by the Court to make a CFE investment, the City Council may have an opportunity to shape where to target this investment.

Remedy: To what extent will the Court focus on the three "inputs" outlined in the NYS Supreme Court and Court of Appeals decision?

I urge Commission members to read the Court decisions by Justice DeGrasse and Justice Kaye. After expert testimony at the trial, the Court cited three specific areas that resulted in a lack of access to a sound, basic education for the City’s children and that required specific remediation:* Teacher quality,

* Overcrowding and class sizes, and
* Instrumentalities of learningWe argue in EPP’s amicus brief that the Court must at least assure itself that these three specific problems will be addressed. The Court should also put in place a mechanism in order to measure progress of remediation.
Any accountability system begins with reliable measurements. The members of the Commission need to recognize that, at this time, many different types of measurements exist for the three "inputs." Without some agreement about what is to be measured, it will be difficult for the Court to ascertain whether the remediation order has had any significant impact on the education of public school children in New York City. The Educational Priorities Panel strongly urged the Court to establish benchmarks for improvement with the assistance of independent experts. If the Court fails to do so, EPP urges the Commission to recommend that the City Council do so.

I assume that the Commission will hold future hearings on the specific "inputs" outlined by the Court, so EPP will have the opportunity to comment in depth on some of the remediation and measurement issues.

There has been a long, sad history of racial and economic inequality in our country that has been reflected in the funding for our public schools. This inequality has not only hurt children and crippled the economic well being of the adults they became, but it also contaminated and continues to contaminate discussions of educational policy. The class size debate is a particularly glaring example of double standards, often obfuscated by double talk.

Private schools in this city and public schools in affluent districts always mention their smaller class sizes. It would be strange and irrational to see a brochure stating, "We have large class sizes, but we have teaching strategies that are effective." I’ve never seen a brochure like that, have you? More affluent parents would simply not tolerate this type of educational offering.

Yet, "We have large class sizes, but teaching strategies that are effective" is the prescription that large urban school systems have been offering low-income children and their parents for twenty-five years. These strategies seem not to have made an appreciable difference in student outcomes. Part of the problem is that urban schools have a great churning of strategies. During this a quarter of a century, many school districts in the rest of the state adopted standards for class sizes that approach those of private schools, with 16 to 18 students per class on average in the early grades and 22 students in the higher grades.

Before the 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, there was a last, but vigorous attempt by many members of the research community to document the effectiveness of remediation programs. The failure to find convincing evidence that Title 1 funded remediation programs significantly improved test performance resulted in a new framework for the ESEA in 1994 that focused on school improvement. This is still the basic framework for No Child Left Behind. The U. S. Department of Education is now even more eager to try to document through research the instructional strategies that are the most effective. So far, after four years, efforts to frame this research are still underway and there have been no findings of any significance.

Meanwhile, assessments of the Tennessee STAR and Wisconsin SAGE class size reduction programs have found that smaller classes in the early grade results in improved achievement, especially for urban, low-income children. These research results have been reviewed by other researchers. When directly presented by the researchers themselves, the issue becomes one of cost benefit, not effectiveness. In other words, class size reduction really works, but it is an expensive strategy. It requires more classrooms and more teachers.

Education policy makers, both in the private sector and the public sector, have most definitely decided to reduce class sizes for students in affluent and middle class communities, but not in New York City public schools. The question before the trial Court was whether this educational benefit should be extended to low-income, minority children. Judge Leland DeGrasse heard extensive testimony from researchers on the benefits of class size reduction as well as the critics of this practice. He ruled that large class sizes were an indicator of City children’s lack of access to a sound basic education.

On behalf of the Educational Priorities Panel, I ask that the members of this City Council Commission not reargue this issue, but instead focus on how best to implement class size reduction. Judge DeGrasse has ruled against a double standard for education. I hope the members of the Commission will accept this ruling and move on to the important issues of implementation.