Room
for a View
School Funding
Demography in New York
By Sue Books
art by leslie bender In a landmark decision early last year, a state judge found
that for many years, New York State has violated its constitution by
offering New York City public school students a quality of education
“so deficient that it falls below the constitutional floor.”
Because the state’s system of funding its public schools has shortchanged
students of color disproportionately, Justice Leland DeGrasse of State
Supreme Court in Manhattan found the state also has violated federal
civil rights laws.
“The majority of the city’s public school students leave high
school unprepared for more than low-paying work, unprepared for college,
and unprepared for the duties placed upon them by a democratic society,”
DeGrasse wrote. “The schools have broken a covenant with students,
and with society.”
New York City schools educate 1.1 million students, including 73 percent
of all African-American, Latino, and Asian students in the state and
60 percent of those living in poverty. Eighty-four percent of the students
in the New York City schools are of color and most live in poverty.
Based on their families’ income, 73 percent of the K-6 students
were eligible to participate in the free lunch program in 1997-1998.
The Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a coalition of advocacy groups representing
city schoolchildren, filed the suit against the state in 1993. In what
may be the largest single donation of pro bono work in the city ($14
million in legal work and expenses), the New York City law firm of Simpson,
Thacher & Bartlett carried it forward.
In the trial court decision handed down January 10, 2001, DeGrasse ordered
the state to come up with a better system of funding its public schools
by mid-September. But Governor Pataki appealed the decision in August,
with the argument that DeGrasse used an unconstitutionally high standard
to determine state obligation and that any failure to provide an adequate
education for New York City students is the fault of New York City,
not the state. A ruling on the appeal is expected early this year.
Predictably, DeGrasse’s decision unleashed a rash of accusations
and finger pointing.
“The city has not maintained its responsibility to its own schools,”
State Senator Dean Skelos, a Long Island Republican, told a New York
Times reporter two days after the decision. “This is a red herring
and a distraction,” City Schools Chancellor Harold Levy responded.
“I am not persuaded that the city is not carrying its burden.”
Money Talks
School funding generally comes from three sources: local, state, and
federal. But unlike other school districts, New York City, Buffalo,
Rochester, Syracuse, and Yonkers (the state’s five largest districts)
are prohibited by the legislature from levying taxes to pay for schools.
Consequently, these districts must rely on funds allocated by their
cities and the state for the local component of their school budgets.
In New York City, for the 1999-2000 school year, local funds accounted
for 51.5 percent of all funding, state funds for 43.9 percent, and federal
dollars for 4.6 percent.
The lawsuit, Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York, challenges
not school funding in general, but rather how the state’s share
has been allocated.
DeGrasse’s 190-page decision documents a range of resource-based
shortcomings in New York City public schools, including chronic teacher
shortages, crumbling buildings, and outdated textbooks in short supply.
In 1997-1998, almost 14 percent of all teachers in city public schools
lacked certification in any subject they taught. The ruling also noted
city school buildings in a “parlous physical state” after
a “a history of neglect,” and said that almost 60 percent
of the students attended overcrowded schools plagued by “a chronic
shortage of adequate textbooks.” None of this has changed much
in the last year.
Not surprisingly, academic achievement among students in New York City
schools has been, and continues to be, low. DeGrasse affirmed “a
causal link between funding and educational opportunity”—not
the same thing as a direct link between funding and student performance.
He also noted that fewer than 12 percent of all 9th graders in the city
schools historically have received a Regents high school diploma (now
the only one available). Only half of all New York City public school
students who started 9th grade in 1996 and stayed in school made it
to the 12th grade in four years. Of the even smaller number who graduated
and entered the City University of New York, approximately four-fifths
needed remediation.
Testing Achievement
This battle over school funding comes at a time when New York, like
almost every other state in the nation, is raising the stakes for high
school graduation. A set of rigorous graduation standards, adopted by
the State Board of Regents in 1996, are being phased in. Passing the
Regents exam in English became a graduation requirement three years
ago; since then, “passing” has meant getting a score of at
least 55, which is regarded as a measure of basic competency, pegged
just below state standards. The passing score is supposed to rise to
65 by 2004 for the English exam and by 2005 for the math exam. According
to an article in the New York Times (December 29, 2001), members of
the Board of Regents are worried that when this happens, about 20 percent
of the students upstate and more than 40 percent in New York City and
other large cities will fail and so will be unable to graduate.
In addition to raising the bar for graduation, state and federal legislation
has increased regular academic testing of students. A new round of test
scores reported by the New York City Board of Education shows that fewer
than a quarter (22.8 percent) of the city’s eighth-graders are
meeting the state’s math standards and only about one-third are
meeting the state’s standards for English language arts. Statewide,
the scores are better, although still troubling. Almost 40 percent of
the state’s eighth-graders are meeting the standards in math and
45 percent in English language arts. In the New Paltz district, 49 percent
of the students are meeting the standards in math and 58 percent in
English language arts. In the Kingston district, 39 percent are meeting
the standards in math and 49 percent in English language arts, and in
Rhinebeck, 66 percent are meeting the standards in math and 68 percent
in English language arts.
Solutions
In what it promises is not “a Robin Hood scheme,” the New
York State Board of Regents recently proposed simplifying the complexity
of state-aid formulas (which DeGrasse argued have proved far too prone
to political manipulation), directing more aid to high-need districts,
and lifting some of the restrictions on how school districts can spend
state aid. If passed by the Legislature, the proposal would benefit
New York City and the four other large urban districts as well as some
rural and small urban districts. This would be a step in the right direction,
the Campaign for Fiscal Equity said in a statement posted on its Web
site, but only that, as it leaves in place a funding system not grounded
in an independent assessment of the actual cost of providing the “sound
basic education” the state is supposed to provide.
The Education Article of the New York State Constitution stipulates,
“The legislature shall provide for all the maintenance and support
of a system of free common schools, wherein all the children of this
state may be educated.” In 1982 the New York Court of Appeals interpreted
this to mean the state must provide a “sound basic education”
statewide. Consequently, the battle now is over, in part, how “sound
basic education” will be interpreted in the present context.
Plaintiffs argued during the trial that the substantive definition of
“sound basic education” ought to be linked to the Regents
Learning Standards, which all students are now expected to meet.
The state’s lawyers countered that these standards are “aspirational”
only. Instead, they said, a sound basic education ought to be defined
essentially as an 8th- or 9th-grade level of competency in reading and
a 6th-grade level of competency in math.
DeGrasse rejected both arguments, took what he called a middle-ground
position, and said high-school graduates ought to acquire “the
foundational skills” necessary to sustain “competitive employment”—that
is, graduates ought not be relegated essentially to the ranks of the
working poor.
The battle over school funding in New York comes also when the always-politicized
tug-of-war over the state budget has been exacerbated by the economic
fallout of the tragedy of September 11. The base and supplemental budget
the Legislature passed this year provides for a much smaller than usual
increase in spending on education, and earmarks much of the increase
for building aid only. This year’s budget news has precipitated
a crisis that is particularly acute in Buffalo, where 433 teachers are
facing layoffs due to a $28 million shortfall in the school district’s
budget. Plans also have been shelved to offer a statewide pre-kindergarten
program in every school district that wants one. Only a few new programs
were started this school year and no money was provided to increase
the number of four-year-olds in existing classes.
New York is hardly alone in facing a school funding challenge. More
than two dozen states across the nation have been sued over school funding—some,
like New Jersey and Ohio, multiple times. A critical turning point came
in 1973 when the US Supreme Court found that education is not a fundamental
right protected by the US Constitution and that inequities in funding
therefore do not violate the federal constitution. By a single vote
the court in San Antonio v. Rodriguez decided to let stand the school
funding system in Texas—a system (similar to almost every other
state’s) that relies heavily on local property taxes to fund public
schools and therefore virtually guarantees that spending will be aligned
with property wealth, not student need.
Since Rodriguez, lawyers seeking to change this equation have appealed
to the generally vague language in education clauses in state constitutions
to argue for a more equitable distribution of school dollars, a more
adequate level of funding across the board, or both. The New York case,
focused on the state’s obligation to provide the opportunity for
a sound basic education, challenges the state’s school finance
system on both counts, equity and adequacy.
Separate and Unequal?
How equitable is New York’s school funding? According to the New
York State Education Department’s annual report to the governor,
disparities are significant. In 1998-1999, average district spending
was $10,317 per pupil, but some districts spent considerably more than
this and others much less. At $17,640 per pupil, spending in Great Neck,
Long Island was more than double the $7,591 spent on students in central
New York’s Whitney Point and almost double the $9,623 spent in
New York City.
In the area, per-pupil spending in the Kingston district was $10,306
in 1998-1999. Rhinebeck’s was $10,712. The comparable figure for
the New Paltz district, listed on the State Education Department Web
site, is $17,569. “This is a misleading figure,” says Alan
Derry, superintendent of the New Paltz district. “The school district
is paying off several loans and debt reduction is included in that figure.”
The debt included construction of a new school and renovation of most
of the buildings in the district. “What we probably spent on education
that year was $11,000-$12,000,” Derry said. According to the State
Education Department, per-pupil spending in the New Paltz district in
the previous year (1997-1998) was $10,317.
For more than a decade prior to DeGrasse’s ruling last year, New
York City spent less per pupil than the state average. DeGrasse noted
that in 1997-1998, the city spent $1,247 less per pupil (in state and
local funds combined) than any other major school district in the state
and that from 1994 to 2000 New York City received only 34 percent to
35.7 percent of the total state aid distributed, although 37 percent
of the state’s public school students were enrolled in city schools.
But do such disparities mean spending is necessarily unconstitutional?
DeGrasse said yes. The state is arguing no.
The True Cost
The battle over school funding in New York, as elsewhere, is being fought
out through legal wrangling over the letter of the law and political
wrangling over how inexpensively it can be met. It’s easy to forget
in all the talk about state-aid distribution formulas and prior interpretations
of constitutional language that educational opportunity, once lost or
withheld, can never be regained. Along with whatever else it may do,
Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York has documented how contingent
and uncertain educational opportunity is for millions of children who
sit in overcrowded classrooms in dilapidated buildings, with teachers
who might do a good job but nevertheless are not fully qualified and
with books that must be shared or forgone altogether.
Even if the court ultimately says this is okay—good enough, at
least for these children—of course, it’s not. Children can
never make up for what they lose in a distribution of educational opportunity
that hands them the short end of the stick. As former State Education
Department Commissioner Thomas Sobol testified during the trial:
If you ask the children to attend school in conditions where plaster
is crumbling, the roof is leaking and classes are being held in unlikely
places because of overcrowded conditions, that says something to the
children about how you diminish the value of the activity and of the
child’s participation in it and perhaps of the child himself. If,
on the other hand, you send a child to a school in well-appointed or
adequate facilities that sends the opposite message. That says this
counts. You count. Do well.
Ultimately, Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York forces the
question for the people of New York: who will share—who will be
allowed to share—in the promise of equal educational opportunity?
As Richard Beattie and Robert Hughes, chairman and president of New
Visions for Public Schools, argued in a New York Times op-ed article,
as a standard for funding, “an eighth-grade education … is
a cruel joke, especially for millions of poor and at-risk students.”
Such a proposal “exposes the hypocrisy of the state’s position
on both educational standards and equitable financing.”
“Demography is not destiny,” DeGrasse insisted in his decision.
“The amount of melanin in a student’s skin, the home country
of her antecedents, the amount of money in the family bank account,
are not the inexorable determinants of student success.” However,
when educational opportunity depends not on the wealth of the state
as a whole, but rather on where a child lives—something over which
he or she has no control at all—demography becomes destiny. New
York now has a much-watched opportunity to lean in the other direction.
The texts of DeGrasse’s decision and the state’s appeal
can be retrieved from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s Web site:
www.cfequity.org.
Information on school districts (demographics, student test scores,
and spending) can be retrieved from the Web site for the State Education
Department: www.emsc.nysed.gov:80/repcrd.
See District-wide Summary Report Cards (February 2001).
Sue Books lives in New Paltz and is an associate professor in the
Department of Educational Studies at SUNY New Paltz.
|
