Public Policy and Education Fund of New York » Issues

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!

New Report: the Affordable Care Act and New Yorkers: the Gift That Keeps On Giving

Sean Collins — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:10:28 +0000

(Released January 5th, 2012) Public Policy and Education Fund of New York (PPEF). Health care reform will likely rear its head as, if not the most, one of the most controversial issues of the 2012 political year in New York. But any conversation about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) must begin with the facts. Those facts include the ways small businesses and individual New Yorkers are significantly benefiting right now from the 2010 federal law. The additional benefits to consumers and small businesses will become a reality only if the New York State Legislature and Governor pass legislation to establish a New York health insurance exchange: the mechanism millions will use to gain quality, affordable health insurance benefits. This report explains how the passage of the ACA is adding to the economic security of millions of individuals and small businesses in New York. We present compelling statistics as to the number that are impacted and the monetary benefits. We also clarify how full implementation by state lawmakers will make an even more significant difference in the health care and the lives of average New Yorkers.

Click here to download the full 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).

A New Pro-Consumer Health Care System

Charlie Albanetti — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 19:32:58 +0000

(Released January 20, 2011) Policy and Education Fund of New York (PPEF). The report makes numerous recommendations for the state implementation of the new federal law in New York State. The recommendations cover five major areas: 1) consumer-oriented governance; 2) consumer assistance; 3) affordable health insurance rates; 4) consumer rights; and 5) reduction of racial and ethnic disparities in health care. Among the report’s major recommendations are:

strong consumer representation on the governing board of the New York exchange, the health insurance “marketplace” that must be created by the state by 2014;
aggressive consumer enforcement through a significant increase in penalties that may be recovered by the State Insurance Department against health insurers that violate the new federal law, a state exhange that can exclude health plans that sell lower quality products, and a strong role in enforcement by new Attorney General Eric Schneiderman;
a permanent independent consumer assistance office to coordinate community-based organizations across the state to assist consumers with disputes with health insurers, enroll consumers in health insurance, and help consumers select health insurance plans;
reform of the health insurance rate regulation system that was reinstituted in New York in 2010 to allow consumers to meaningfully participate in rate proceedings;
expansion of consumer rights by allowing consumers harmed by serious violations of health insurance laws to recover their damages in court (known as a “private right of action”); and
reduction of health care disparities based on race, ethnicity and other factors: by designating a single state entity to oversee collection of disparities data and to make this information available to the public at no charge through the Internet.

Click here to download the PDF.

How the New Health Care Law Helps You!

Charlie Albanetti — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:29:33 +0000

We’ve produced two new fact sheets about the health care law and how it affects you. The first is a general fact sheet. The second explains some of the common myths and lies about health care reform.

Click here to download How the New Health Care Law Helps You!

Click here to download Myths About Health Care Reform

Extending the State Fiscal Relief Provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)

Charlie Albanetti — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:36:06 +0000

(Released June 8, 2010) The “state fiscal relief” that was included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) played a major role in allowing New York and the other states to balance their 2009-10 with fewer budget cuts and fewer tax increases than would have been necessary otherwise. This “state fiscal relief” should be extended so that its phase-out dovetails more closely with the recovery of the 50 states’ economies and finances.

Click here to download the PDF.

Extending the State Fiscal Relief Provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)