Public Policy and Education Fund of New York » Education

New Report: Early Childhood Education: Frozen Funding Leads to Cracks in the Foundation

Sean Collins — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:03:48 +0000

(Released February 7th, 2012) Public Policy and Education Fund (PPEF). Early childhood education is the cornerstone of our educational system. With benefits that include higher academic achievement, higher earnings as adults, a more productive civic life, high quality early childhood education is a proven-to-work strategy for all children. Yet, New York State’s investment in early childhood programs and specifically in the Universal Prekindergarten (UPK) program has decreased over the years.

Click here to download the report!

Back to Inequality: How Students in Poor School Districts are Paying the Price for the State Budget

Charlie Albanetti — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:27:15 +0000

The 2011 state budget cut $1.3 billion from school classrooms across New York. In enacting these cuts, students in poor districts lost the most.

The cuts in poor districts were three times as large as those in wealthy districts (see Methodology section for a description of the calculations and definitions).
To put these cuts in perspective, cuts in poor districts of $843 per pupil amounts to a cut of $21,075 for a classroom of 25 students.
Cuts in average wealth districts, below average wealth districts, poor districts and the poorest districts were all two to three times larger than those in wealthy districts.
Students in poor districts were forced to give up much more in their classrooms than those in wealthy districts. Across the state class sizes went up in 63% of school districts, some districts went as far as to reduce kindergarten or pre-kindergarten from full-day to half day. Large numbers of districts made cuts to summer school, art, music, and honors or advanced placement courses that are essential to competitive college applications. Across the state 11,000 teachers, librarians, guidance counselors and other school positions were eliminated this year.
All of this despite the fact that Governor Cuomo ran on a pledge to be “the great equalizer” in education by redistributing funding from wealthy school districts to poor ones. Instead his first budget has taken us back to greater inequality.
By contrast in 2007, the State made a commitment to schoolchildren across the state with the Campaign for Fiscal Equity settlement that provided increases to poor districts that were more than four times those given to wealthy districts. Governor Cuomo’s first budget has reversed the state’s commitment to educational equity and opportunity.

Click here to download PDF.

QUALITYstarsNY – Fact Sheet for Professionals

Charlie Albanetti — Wed, 18 May 2011 11:59:57 +0000

QUALITYstarsNY is a comprehensive initiative to ensure that our young children – the 1.5 million New Yorkers under age six – have the opportunity for high quality early learning experiences.

Quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS) are designed to evaluate program quality based on universal standards for early childhood settings; communicate program quality to families by assigning them to “star ratings” similar to those used in other consumer ratings; and help programs continually improve quality through targeted supports.

Click here to download the PDF.

QUALITYstarsNY – Fact Sheet for Professionals

QUALITYstarsNY – Fact Sheet for Stakeholders

Charlie Albanetti — Wed, 18 May 2011 11:58:18 +0000

QUALITYstarsNY is a comprehensive initiative to ensure that our young children – the 1.5 million New Yorkers under age six – have the opportunity for high quality early learning experiences.

Click here to download the PDF.

QUALITYstarsNY – Stakeholders Fact Sheet

QUALITYstarsNY – Fact Sheet for Parents

Charlie Albanetti — Wed, 18 May 2011 11:53:55 +0000

QUALITYstarsNY is a comprehensive initiative to ensure that our young children – the 1.5 million New Yorkers under age six – have the opportunity for high quality early learning experiences.

Click here to download the PDF.

QUALITYstarsNY – Parent Fact Sheet

QUALITYstarsNY and early childhood education

Charlie Vella — Wed, 18 May 2011 11:43:37 +0000

Early childhood education is increasingly being cited as one of the most important factors in a child’s future success. 75% of a child’s brain development and 85% of intellect, personality, and social skills are developed by age five. And, several studies, most notably the High Scope Perry Preschool Project, estimate that every dollar invested in early childhood education returns over seven dollars by the time a child turns 19.

One method that has been used in other states to improve the quality of early care and learning programs offered is implementation of a quality rating and improvement system, or “QRIS.” More than 20 states have already implemented similar initiatives with great success.

Here in New York, a new system called QUALITYstarsNY has just completed an initial field test in 200 early learning programs across the state. QUALITYstarsNY is a system that rates early care and learning programs, and also provides those programs with the programmatic and financial assistance they need to improve.

Because of the instrumental role that early learning programs play in developing our kids’ minds to prepare them for college and successful careers, it is important to ensure that the program they attend are meeting certain requirements.

QUALITYstarsNY is a straightforward rating system that evaluates early childhood programs on a five-star scale. By holding these programs to strict guidelines, parents will be able to rest assured their children are not left behind and remain on a level playing field with other students across the state.

Watch this new video about the program that we produced along with our friends at WinningBeginningNY:

Want to learn more? Here are three fact sheets you can download (click the title to download a PDF).

New York City’s Contract for Excellence: Closing the Funding Gap or a Funding Shell Game?

J. Zhu — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:12:23 +0000

(Released October 13, 2009) Press Release: The Alliance for Quality Education and the Public Policy & Education Fund released a report today that evaluates the equity impacts of the Contract for Excellence on school funding in New York City.

Click here to download PDF.

New York City’s Contract for Excellence: Closing the Funding Gap or a Funding Shell Game?

J. Zhu — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:07:45 +0000

(Released October 13, 2009) The Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) court decisions found that many students in New York City were not being provided access to the “sound basic education” that is their right under the state constitution. In response, the governor and the state legislature enacted funding reforms to substantially increase state school aid across the state. The law, enacted in 2007, prioritized high need school districts and prioritized high need schools within those districts. New York State created a new funding formula to distribute state operating aid in a more equitable manner to fulfill its constitutional obligations. Under this formula, 70% of new foundation aid, the state’s basic classroom operating funding, is distributed to high need school districts—including New York City.

Click here to download PDF.

Moving Towards Educational Equity?: How is New York State’s School Funding Reform Impacting Educational Equity on Long Island?

J. Zhu — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:09:31 +0000

(Released September 15, 2009) Long Island schools are well known for quality education, but in reality there is a wide range of differences between the educational resources and the student outcomes in school districts on Long Island. Long Island is home to some of the best schools in New York State and the country–particularly in some of the wealthier suburban districts, but Long Island also is home to school districts with the highest concentration of student poverty in New York State. As in small and large cities across New York State, high concentrations of student poverty correlate on Long Island with higher proportions of black and Hispanic students. However, no other region of New York State has the degree of racial segregation seen in Long Island schools. In fact out of the eleven school districts in the state with the greatest proportion of black and Hispanic students, nine are on Long Island. Five Long Island school districts–Wyandanch, Roosevelt, Hempstead, Westbury and Uniondale–have a student population that is over 95% black and Hispanic.

Click here to download the PDF.

Race Matters: Impact of the 2009-10 Executive Budget Proposal

J. Zhu — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:03:12 +0000

(Released March 3, 2009) This report examines the impact of the Executive Budget on people of color in several major policy areas: education, higher education, health care, human services, and criminal and juvenile justice. (It is therefore a snapshot of a few major policy areas; it does not present a full picture of the Executive Budget.) We looked at key policy and spending proposals in the Executive Budget in order to determine whether there will be an unfair impact on communities of color. In each of the policy areas covered, we document that racial inequities will be continued or compounded, although to different degrees depending on the policy area. The results of our analysis are mixed – we found some proposals that address racial and ethnic disparities and others that increase disparities. But on balance the proposed cuts would have a disproportionately negative impact on communities of color. The proposed budget, if enacted, would increase the racial and ethnic disparities in our state by key economic and social measures.

Click here to download the PDF.