The final report of the New York State Commission on Education Reform,
otherwise known as the Zarb Commission, contains a complicated set of
proposals that would shift the blame for educational failure in poor
urban school districts away from the state and onto the districts
themselves. This is not reform; it is an attempt to evade the state's
own responsibilities.
In its ruling last summer in Campaign for Fiscal Equity vs. New York,
the Court of Appeals required the state to reform the education finance
system so that New York City would receive the ``funding level necessary
to provide city students with the opportunity for a sound basic
education.'' Neither the Zarb Commission nor the Standard & Poor's
report on which it builds takes this charge seriously.
The S&P report recognizes that the per-pupil cost of a sound basic
education is higher in a district with a higher share of low-income
students, students with limited English proficiency, or students with
disabilities. This report makes no attempt, however, to estimate these
extra costs. Instead, it suggests basing state aid on ``weighted
pupils,'' using the extra weights for students in these categories that
are found in the average state's aid formula.
This approach is irresponsible. The weights in most state aid formulas,
including the current aid formulas in New York, are political
compromises, not serious estimates of the extra cost of educating
disadvantaged students -- which the court's mandate requires.
Scholarly estimates of these weights are much higher than the weights in
the S&P report. The extra weights for a poor student and for a student
with limited English proficiency, for example, are typically 100 percent
or more in the scholarly literature; the S&P report uses weights of 35
percent and 20 percent, respectively.
The S&P report claims that it ``does not recommend the adoption of one
particular weighting.'' This is disingenuous. All of the calculations in
the report, including the estimated costs of reform, are based on the
same unrealistically low weights for disadvantaged students.
If weights from the scholarly literature were used, education finance
reform would cost a great deal more. Indeed, using S&P's own EdResource
Calculator (http://www.spses.com), we find that switching to a weight of
100 percent for both low-income students and students with limited
English proficiency would at least double the cost of any reform option.
This misleading approach carries over into the Zarb Commission report,
which accepts the pupil weights in the S&P report without even
acknowledging that they lead to an underestimate of the cost of reform.
Moreover, the Zarb Commission outlines a new basic operating aid formula
that does not adjust at all for the extra costs of disadvantaged
students. Instead, the commission calls for a supplemental aid program
to deal with low-income students and students with limited English
proficiency.
This misses the point entirely. The extra costs of educating
disadvantaged students are part of the basic operating expenses of a
school district, not supplemental costs to be handled in an ad hoc
manner. New York state has already tried this supplemental route -- and
failed miserably.
Despite its unwillingness to recommend adequate funding for districts
such as New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse, with high
concentrations of disadvantaged students, the Zarb Commission goes on to
recommend that New York adopt one of the most punitive accountability
programs in the nation. Poor, urban districts will not be given the
resources they need to succeed, and then will be blamed when they do
not.
Schools that fail to raise student test scores will be closed and then
reconfigured, turned into charter schools, or, in extreme cases, taken
over by the state. The available evidence does not show that an
accountability system of this type can be effective in raising student
performance, and, particularly without adequate funding, such severe
sanctions are simply not justified.
Unfortunately, some of the same problems arise in recent proposals made
by the state Education Department and the Campaign for Fiscal Equity.
The Eduction Department proposal uses a reasonable maximum weight for
the extra cost of a poor student, 100 percent, but fails to adjust for
the extra costs of students with limited English proficiency.
The consultants hired by CFE estimate the additional costs of
disadvantaged students using educated guesses by teachers and school
administrators. This approach greatly understates the extra costs faced
by New York City and other poor urban districts. The CFE proposal, which
builds on their consultants' report, therefore understates these costs,
as well. Adding a stringent accountability system to either of these
proposals would lead to unfair penalties on poor urban schools, just
like the Zarb Commission's proposal.
Better approaches are available. We recommend:
· A standard foundation aid formula, the type used by most states,
with realistic adjustments for the extra costs of disadvantaged students
and with a required local tax contribution.
· An accountability program with modest rewards and penalties based
on a school's performance after adjusting for factors outside its
control, such as a concentration of disadvantaged students.
A program of technical assistance and evaluation that would give the
state Education Department enough resources to identify effective
education programs and management practices.
Last summer, the Court of Appeals declared that New York state must be
held accountable for the inequities in its education finance system.
This is the real accountability issue in this case. To meet its
responsibilities to the children in New York City, the state must
implement a new education finance system that fully accounts for the
extra costs required to educate disadvantaged students.
*William Duncombe and
John Yinger teach at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University. Their
research and proposals on the CFE case can be found at http://cpr.maxwell.syr.edu/efap.