Four things to hate about the Spitzer education budget

1- He would give about $100 million less than he pledged last year to NYC schools. These funds are their due from the settlement of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit.

2- The limited amount in additional operating aid he gives with one hand, he takes away with the other, by delaying reimbursement for school construction – which is the last thing we need, when the city has to be encouraged to build more schools more quickly to alleviate overcrowding and reduce class size. This will give them all the excuses they need not to improve the capital plan.

3- The promise of transparency and stability that was supposed to come with a new school aid formula -- one that would be less prone to political manipulation year after year and that would more equitably fund NYC schools -- has entirely vanished.

4- Last but not least, the extra operating aid would come in the form of an unrestricted grant – with no strings attached, unlike the portion of the CFE settlement called Contracts for excellence -- that was actually supposed to be directed to specific programs that research shows actually work, like class size reduction. With this money the city could instead spend it on more testing, cash rewards tied to test scores, more consultants, higher salaries at Tweed, or really any new fad that strikes their fancy.

Paul Francis, Spitzer's director of operations, told New York Sun that the governor's decision to give the city much of these funds in the form of a unrestricted grant was the result of a compromise "between the desire of the city to have unrestricted funds and the desire of the advocacy community to have all the money subject to the Contracts for Excellence."

To the contrary, we need more accountability, not less, with these precious funds. This money belongs to the children of NYC, not to the Governor, the Mayor or Joel Klein; and it must be spent in a way that gives them their constitutional right to an adequate education – including smaller classes in all grades.

We have a lot of work to do, with both the state and the city, to ensure that the promise to our children of smaller classes embodied in the 12 long years of the battle for education equity is actually fulfilled. Stay tuned.

Spitzer's School Budget Has Not Yet Passed

Those of us who, like me, wanted much more from Gov. Eliot Spitzer's proposed plan for public school spending should remember that his proposal is still just that. It hasn't passed and faces interesting opposition in the NY State Senate.

The GOP-controlled state senate's budget bill includes much, much, more money for education (More $500 million more) most of it designed to go to rich NY State districts. The Spitzer proposal, while it increases the amount of cash for every district in New York State, changes the funding formula so that poorer districts in need get more than richer districts not in need. Senator Bruno calls this "class warfare" and, in a way, he's right. Because of the intensely political way state money has been given out in NYS, people residing in poorer school districts pay much higher tax rates (for worse schools) than people in wealthier districts (for better ones). People in NYC, especially, pay for the better schools in NYC suburbs.

While, in my view, the Spitzer proposal does not properly ensure smaller class sizes and panders to Mr. Bloomberg's penchant for random reorganization of the schools (by helping to pay for it) it does address the past unfairness of the funding formula.

On St. Patrick's Day, this Saturday, those campaigning for passage of the Spitzer budget, notably the Alliance for Quality Education will demonstrate at the offices of GOP State Senators Padavan, Golden & Maltese. Get a schedule, bus to the demonstrations, or leafets, or for more information call AQE at 718-222-1089 or Email nycinfor@aquny.org. Although I think victory on class size is crucial and has not yet been won, I think that Governor Spitzer's budget is a good, if imperfect, step. So I'll be there, Saturday. Will You?

Lobbying in Albany

Tuesday, I went on the lobbying trip to Albany with the Chancellor's Parents Advisory Panel, the UFT and the Principals' union. At stake is the final shape of the Education budget proposed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer. The Assembly and Senate have each passed their own "one-house" budget bills from which the final legislative/executive compromise will be hammered.

The Assembly bill has somewhat weak language which would require Mayor Bloomberg to "plan" to bring student-teacher ratios into line with those statewide. This has been presented as "class size" language, but it's not. It's an exception any good lawyer, and most bad ones, could drive a truck through. Even worse, the Senate budget bill is silent on class size, notwithstanding (so far empty) promises, people tell me, from GOP Senators Padavan and Maltese to insert class size language into the Senate Bill.

I have a lot more to write about -- some of which will appear on Daily Gotham -- but, from my point of view the big news is that we now know the names of the key Assembly budget negotiators. We can write them and ask them for class size language, and for language requiring the Mayor to spend this money only with the approval of the NYC Council.

The Assembly negotiators are as follows:


Sheldon Silver, Co-Chair
Herman D. Farrell, Jr.
Ronald Canestrari
Aurelia Greene
James Tedisco

Education Subcommittee

Catherine T. Nolan, Co-chair
Joan Christensen
Darryl Towns
Adriano Espaillat
Amy Paulin *
James Hayes
Rob Walker *

I suggest you call or email these Assembly members to ask them for their support for smaller classes. Otherwise, Mayor Bloomberg will have the freedom to blow the added billions on no-bid contracts with his pals.

I beg to differ...

I hate to contradict my fellow blogger, Daniel Millstone, especially since we'll be sitting together on the bus to Albany for five hours on Tuesday, but the Spitzer education proposal is nowheresville in terms of either class size or real accountability.

Spitzer would eliminate the only dedicated class size funding stream we have -- the state class size program for K-3 -- and would give Tweed free rein to keep wasting money on ineffective and at times counterproductive school restructuring programs. (School restructuring was not on the original list of approved programs, but was apparently put on the list at the request of the Bloomberg administration.) Instead of class sizes going down -- as was promised by CFE-- class sizes could actually go up.

We don't need to wait any longer to know that the Bloom/Klein solutions aren't working.We need more strings attached, we need smaller classes, we need real local and parental input, and we need more oversight.

The Spitzer plan does not provide any of this. His whole notion of accountability mirrors Bloomberg's and Klein's in many ways -- a lot of bluster and tough guy talk. All it would give us is more of the same.

What's the parent/public participation in the plan? The DOE has to hold one public hearing in each borough. That's it. If you think the recent public meetings on the weighted funding proposal have shown that this is likely to change their minds, you must not be paying attention.

If the test scores don't go up enough, they can continue to close more schools rather than improve them, do more ineffectual restructuring, and meanwhile, the kids will continue to suffer.

The Nolan/Lancman bill would at last promise us smaller classes -- which would be a tremendous step forward and would give NYC children for the first time a real opportunity to succeed. None of this will happen if we continue to pretend that the Spitzer plan is anything but deeply flawed.

Spitzer Criticizes Bloomberg's School Statistics

Governor Spitzer has criticized Mayor Bloomberg's assertion that graduation rates are improving. Regarding this oft-cited "accomplishment", the Governor says the City's graduation rate "hasn't changed in any significant way". Here's the story in the Daily News.

Apart from the trend, there is a more fundamental disagreement over what the rate actually is. The City asserts the graduation rate is 58.2% while the State says it's only 43.5%. (For those checking facts, click on the numbers).

Why the difference? First, the City counts all students that get a GED as a regular high school graduates, as well all who graduate after summer school following their fourth year of high school. The City also refuses to include in the cohort almost 6,000 special education students in segregated classes, and more than 16,000 students “discharged” to GED or alternative programs. We know that very few students in either group ever graduate with a regular high school diploma. None of these practices are considered acceptable by the federal government or any independent agency. In fact, the latest report from the US Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics showed NYC with a four year graduation rate of only 38.9% -- the lowest of any of the 100 largest school districts in the country.

Graduation rates are not the only thing the City struggles with measuring. The Mayor's administration still can't seem to publish average class size statistics as required by law. In their February class size report to the City Council, they were supposed to release second semester class size averages, which differ significantly in high schools from the first semester. Yet instead, they simply provided revised numbers for October. Is that the best they can do? Is is really so hard to count how many of our children are in class?