The Alliance for Quality Education is at it again, rallying today in Albany for huge hikes in state education spending. But its claims don’t add up; indeed, the only grade an unbiased teacher would give AQE’s latest so-called report, “Confronting the Opportunity Gap,” is an F.
AQE’s thesis is the same one that every special-interest-backed education group has espoused for decades: The main problem with education in New York is that we aren’t spending enough of the taxpayers’ money.
Never mind that total school-district spending is up 127 percent since the 1995-96 school year, while enrollment is down nearly 4 percent. This, in a period when New York personal incomes grew only 95 percent, while inflation has increased by slightly more than 50 percent.
Since 1995-96, education spending in New York has grown at a rate 2.5 times greater than the rate of inflation. With total spending levels now about $58 billion a year, New Yorkers have maintained the highest per-pupil spending in the nation, 75 percent above the national average.
On average, US states spent $10,615 per pupil in the 2009-10 school year. According to AQE, the 100 poorest districts in New York spend, on average, $19,106 per student.
That’s right: New York’s poorest districts spend more per pupil than any other state in the country. New Jersey, which ranked second in spending per-pupil, allotted $16,841 per student in the 2009-10 school year, about $2,300 less than New York’s poorest districts are spending.
Gov. Cuomo has rightly said time and again that our big education problem is that New York leads the nation in spending on schools but is at the bottom when it comes to performance because we don’t demand enough accountability.
That’s why Cuomo’s budget this year presents targeted investments in our schools, aimed at achieving real results and reform. His management and efficiency grants, for example, reward schools that manage their budgets responsibly and save the taxpayers money — a break with the practice of state handouts to the bureaucracy.
The governor has also provided an overall basic increase in state funding, but tied it to accountability from schools by insisting that every district must first impose a teacher-evaluation system.
With most school funding coming from local property taxes, many of the funding inequities that persist in New York state can be traced to differences in local revenue. About 55 percent of education funding is drawn from local revenues, around 40 percent from state coffers and the last 5 percent from federal sources.
Despite all of AQE’s complaints, there is no need to change the way we allocate this money, since the state already directs almost 70 percent of education funding to high-need districts. In fact, School Funding Fairness’s National Report Card gave New York a grade of “A” in its Effort category, putting us among the top five states in that category.
The numbers speak for themselves. New York can’t continue compelling taxpayers to spend more on education while our students fall behind their peers in other states and countries.
Again, our commitment to investing in education is unparalleled, especially in high-need districts: We already spend more per pupil than any other state in the country.
The governor’s budget aims to get more value from this spending by making important investments in initiatives that have been shown to help students succeed in the classroom and beyond.
What our schoolchildren really need is for special-interest-backed groups like AQE to start suggesting real solutions and reforms to improve our schools, instead of querulously demanding another blank check.
Carrie Remis is executive director of the Rochester-based Parent Power Project and sits on the governor’s Education Reform Commission. Allen Williams is founding president of the New York Center for Educational Justice.