Here we go again: A group set up to steer more and more taxpayer dollars into teachers’ pockets fired its first salvo yesterday in what looks to be another protracted legal battle over school funding in New York.
If not a budget-busting cave-in by Albany.
The self-styled Campaign for Educational Equity, run by lawyer Michael Rebell, released its “analysis” of whether “high-needs” schools have the resources to get the job done.
Amazingly, they don’t.
The answer: More dough, now.
None of this surprises.
First of all, Rebell’s “study” was prepared at Teachers College at Columbia University; teachers being a principal beneficiary of radically hiked school spending, what else would the school advise?
Secondly, Rebell not so long ago ran the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which itself waged a 14-year court fight for more state aid to schools. Now he’s back in the fight.
And his goal now is much the same, too: more money.
As if any sum would ever be enough.
Rebell’s first fight ended with then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s upping of Albany education outlays by $7 billion over five years — though, significantly, the question of whether courts can “order” lawmakers to appropriate specific amounts was left unresolved.
Since then, the world went into deep recession. Albany’s been strapped for cash.
Rebell & Co. now say the state is $5 billion short of what it promised. Never mind that the state’s budget is squeezed to the max — or that, much more to the point, New York already spends more per public-school pupil than any other state in the land ($20,000-plus each).
They don’t care that since the court’s 2006 CFE ruling, state spending jumped nearly $3 billion, amid a fiscal crunch.
Or that the neediest districts got the most: $13,000 a head for the poorest 20 percent of districts, compared to just $2,500 or so for the wealthiest. Aid for the bottom-tier schools shot up some 31 percent since the ruling, more than twice inflation.
What did New York get for that money?
Practically nothing.
Certainly student achievement hasn’t gone up anywhere close to that rate.
Alas, Rebell doesn’t care about that, either. Instead, his study asserts, the state isn’t allowed to cut “essential educational services,” as the group defines them.
And now he’s laid down the basis for yet another lawsuit, crafting a “study” claiming the state’s falling short.
The conversation needs to begin with a determination of what value was realized from the last cash-bath the schools got.
Fatter teacher salaries don’t count.