|

REPORT TO THE BLACK, PUERTO RICAN AND HISPANIC LEGISLATIVE CAUCUS
MARCH 2004

Executive Summary

Purpose of Analysis

This report represents the Educational Priorities Panel's third look at school districts educating the majority of African-American and Latino students in the state. Our intent this time is to look at the broad picture. The NYS Education Department reports student test data for these students, but the Department's funding analysis does not. The Educational Priorities Panel wanted to evaluate how districts with a majority of African-American and Latino students fared in funding and expenditures. This bottom-line analysis looked at seven measurements:

It is important to note that this report's analysis is limited to school districts based on their funding and expenditure levels and their average performance on standardized tests. To adjust for differences in school district size, a per-pupil funding calculation is used. The reader should not assume that this calculation provides an approximate idea of resources available to each student at the school level. School districts vary as to how much they spend for special education services, transportation, and other variables. Also, there is no assurance that all districts have a fair system of allocating funds to schools within their boundaries. This report's measurements reflect how districts serving a majority of African-American and Latino students are faring, but not how African-American and Latino students are faring within these districts, which would take a significantly more detailed analysis

Findings

From the 1995-96 school year to the 2000-2001 school year:

The adopted NYS 2004 school year education budget:

Student achievement:

Policy Priorities of the Black, Puerto Rican and Hispanic Legislative Caucus:

African-American and Latino students constitute 37 percent of all public and private school students in New York State. [1]   These students are concentrated in 28 of the state's 720 school districts. A report by the Civil Rights Project of Harvard University ranks New York lowest among all states in the percentage of African-American or Latino students enrolled in majority-white schools. [2]

New York City schools educate 62.34 percent of the state's African-American and Latino students attend. The large cities of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Yonkers educate 7.32 percent of students of this race and ethnicity. An additional 7.03 percent are now educated in 23 suburban school districts in Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk counties where African-American and Latino students constitute a majority of students. These 28 majority-minority districts are the subject of this report's analysis.

We report measurements on pupil funding, expenditures, and test scores for the big five cities individually and as a group. For the school districts in the downstate suburbs of Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk counties we created two groups of majority-minority school districts:

• AA/L, high-needs districts: These are suburban school districts where 70 percent or more of students are receiving free and reduced lunch in the 1995-96 school year. Their students' socio-economic characteristics are very similar to those of the big five cities. 74 percent of the students are eligible for free and reduced lunch. 32,396 students are educated by these 5 school districts. 15,002 are African American and 13,763 are Latino. 3,631 are white or other, a category which includes Asians and Native Americans

• AA/L, modest-income districts: The second group of suburban school districts with a majority of African-American and Latino students have 46 percent of students who are eligible for free and reduced lunch. 81,291 students are educated by these 18 school districts. 34,342 are African American and 23,216 are Latino. 23,733 students are white or other. A CWR of "1" represents the average school district wealth for the state. These districts have a mean CWR of 1.41, much higher than the group of 5 school districts, whose mean CWR was 0.66.

For the purposes of comparison, we created three other sets of all the suburban school districts in Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk where white (W) students are the majority:

In Suffolk county, there are five small school districts, located in exclusive summer home areas, that educate a total of 688 students and whose district wealth ranges from 7 to 24 times the average school district wealth for the state. A majority of Bridgehampton's students are African American, but we have excluded this district from our analyses along with the majority-white student districts of Amagansett, Fire Island, Quoque, and Fishers Island. Districts created for special education services have also been eliminated from this study.

State Aid
From the 1995-96 school year to the 2000-01 school year, the New York State Legislature negotiated for sizeable investments in public education and had the revenues to do so. Were these funds distributed fairly based on school district wealth and student needs?

In comparing total state aid amounts for the two groups of suburban districts with a majority of African American/Latino students (high needs and modest income), and the three groups of suburban districts with a majority of white students (modest income, middle income, and high income), state aid increases during this period averaged in the range of a low of 23 percent for moderate-income and high-income majority-white districts to 34 percent for the high-needs majority African-American/Latino districts. In dollar amounts, the range was from a dollar increase of $241 for the high-income districts (which depend mostly on their local wealth) to a $1,794 increase for high-needs district.

State Aid increases to the big five school districts were even larger. Syracuse received the lowest rate of increase from the 1995-96 to the 2001-01 school years, 21 percent, which totaled $1,213. New York City's increase of 41% percent seems high, but in dollars it came to $1,399. This is more than Syracuse, but less than the three other large school districts. The truly dramatic increase went to Yonkers, which gained $3,599 in this five-year period, a 92 percent hike. But this reflected a special state payment of $81 million to settle a federal race discrimination lawsuit.

School District Expenditures
The increases in total district expenditures were also compared for the big five school districts and the five suburban groups of districts. This is an important measurement, because some districts perceive increases in state school aid as an opportunity to reduce local school property taxes, or, in the case of the large five cities, an opportunity to reduce municipal support for schools. When this supplanting takes place, students do not benefit.

In all the suburban groups of school districts with a majority of African American and Latino students, increases in average state aid appear to have been accompanied by an increase in total expenditures during this five-year period. The extent of local investment is difficult to discern, because federal funding increases were not included in this analysis. As the charts below will show, total expenditures in the African-American/Latino high-needs districts increased during this period to an average of $14,094 per pupil, $915 below the figure for middle-income districts with a majority of white students. Modest-income African-American/Latino districts increased, on average, their expenditures to $14,484 per student, which fell short by $525 the per-pupil expenditure levels of middle-income suburban districts.

While this represents a narrowing of a funding gap between high-minority and low-minority school districts in the downstate suburban area, it should be noted that high-minority school districts have significantly higher student needs. Even the modest-income districts with a majority of African-American/Latino students have more than five times the number of students receiving free and reduced lunch than the middle-income districts with a majority of white students.

Over this five year period, per-pupil expenditures levels increased even more sharply in the big five cities, especially in Buffalo (34 percent), Yonkers (36 percent), and New York City (40 percent). Syracuse, in contrast, experienced only a modest increase (12 percent) and by the 2000-01 school year was the lowest spending big city district, displacing New York City.

The per-pupil spending gap between New York City and modest-income, majority white student districts is $1,290. This group of districts is comparable in wealth to New York City, both having a Combined Wealth Ratio close to 1.0, which is the average for the state but below average for the downstate suburban area. However, student needs in the city are far higher than in this suburban group of districts. New York City has eight times the number of students eligible for free and reduced lunch than modest income, majority white districts.

When New York City is compared to districts with comparable student demographics, Yonkers and the group of suburban districts with high-needs students, the spending gap is considerably larger. New York City spent $11,474 per pupil in 2000-01 school year, $3,266 below Yonkers and $3,363 below suburban districts educating high-needs, African-American/Latino students.

Some portion of New York City's under spending may represent insufficient support from the city budget, which has many other responsibilities, such as a municipal hospital system. But it also represents the limitations imposed by the legislative strategy of regional shares, which sets a limit on increases to New York City regardless of the school aid formulas.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | next