(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...
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...
(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....
(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....
(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....
(Released August 15, 2008) This report sought to evaluate recent funding trends and performance of New York City schools. The report found evidence that the funding gap between schools with the highest and lowest concentrations of student poverty has grown larger over time, from $375 in 2006 to $570 in 2009. This resource inequity has significant implications for the entire New York City education system with particular implications for students living in poverty, English Language Learners, and...
(Released February 14, 2008) For fourteen years the Campaign for Fiscal Equity school-funding lawsuit faced a series of appeals and delays that stymied fair school funding reform. The New York State Court of Appeals ruled in the CFE case that the state was failing to meet its constitutional obligation to provide students with a “sound basic education” also defined by the courts as a “meaningful high school education.” Since the CFE lawsuit was originally brought by New York City...
(Released October 15, 2006) New York Needs Adequate Funding in the 2007 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill. The U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, Education and Labor provide needed resources to ensure that New York’s children and families have the support necessary to allow them to thrive and be healthy, contributing members of society. These programs must be a priority for our elected officials who are making key funding decisions in Washington, D.C.
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(Released May 18, 2006) New York State’s school funding system faces dual crises. First is the failure to provide children with a “meaningful high school education,” also called a “sound, basic education,” as mandated by the state constitution and the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (“CFE II”) decision.1 The clearest consequence of this failure is that over one-third of high school students today do not graduate in four years. In the 2006-07 Enacted Budget, the Legislature...
(Released December 22, 2005) This report is the fourth in a series of reports that analyze the impact of state policy decisions on school districts and school children across the State of New York.
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