The 2003 New York State Court of Appeals ruling in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case has created a historic opportunity to reform New York City's troubled schools. Unfortunately, state officials seem focused on increasing funding statewide without mandating change in how the city manages its schools and handles the money received. The report below by Raymond Domanico reviews two decades of evidence showing that increasing school aid without structural reforms does not improve city schools. Instead, the data point to the city's real problem: poor management, and contractual restrictions that make it virtually impossible to assign more good teachers to the schools that need them most. If state officials do not mandate structural reforms through the CFE ruling, they will only succeed in mandating a higher price tag for failure

No Strings Attached?
Ensuring That "CFE" Funds Are Used Effectivelyby Raymond Domanico

more comments in the NY POST:

NY Post
By E.J. McMAHON

July 14, 2004 -- A COURT-IMPOSED dead line for changing New York
state's school fund ing formula will probably come and go in the next
two weeks, without any agreed-upon response from Gov. Pataki and
legislative leaders in Albany. At that point, it will be up to state
Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse - and, by extension, the
appellate courts above him - to decide what needs to be done to
ensure a "sound basic education" for all New York City students.
The fallacy at the heart of the landmark Campaign for Fiscal Equity
(CFE) case is the notion that a lack of "resources" is the root cause
of failure in New York City's well-funded school system.
Yet, even from the blindfolded perspective of the judiciary, there is
a glimmer of hope that something good may come out of this lawsuit.
The quality of teaching, which the Court of Appeals called "the first
and most essential input" in education, has been a key issue at every
stage of the case. As Chief Judge Judith Kaye put it, there has long
been "a mismatch between student need in New York City and the
quality of teaching directed to that need."

If the courts take their own analysis seriously, they should be open
to a CFE remedy that blows up the biggest obstacle to improving
teaching in New York City's worst schools - the managerial
straitjacket formed by the teachers' union contract.The danger of
simply dumping more money into schools without eliminating
contractual impediments to school improvement is documented in a new
report written for the Manhattan Institute by veteran educator
Raymond Domanico.

From 1982-83 through 2001-02, Domanico found, K-12 public school
spending in New York state tripled on a per-pupil basis - and
school aid from Albany to New York City ended up rising even faster
than the statewide average. The new money served mainly to finance
the hiring of nearly 75,000 new teachers and other professional
staff, including roughly 30,000 added "pedagogical employees" in the
city alone.

The result of all this spending: stagnation or even decline in key
pupil-performance measures in city schools, and only "slight or
moderate improvements" in districts elsewhere.
Why didn't the investment yield better results? In particular, why
are schools with disadvantaged students still worse off?
The ultimate answer, Domanico says, is a contract that makes it
impossible to assign teachers where needed, to base pay on
performance or to offer pay incentives for teachers in such
specialties as mathematics and the sciences.This problem is
aggravated by the city school system's budget-allocation policies,
which effectively encourage the movement of experienced teachers out
of schools that need them most. Thus, the average salary in
wealthy "low-need" community school districts is up to 24 percent
higher than those in poor, "high-need" areas.

CFE's main solution - one DeGrasse clearly favors as well -
is smaller class sizes, which would necessitate the hiring of
thousands of additional teachers. But Domanico says that approach is
virtually guaranteed to fail. In fact, by further diluting a finite
pool of teaching talent and creating more openings for experienced
teachers to transfer out of bad schools, a blanket class-size
reduction mandate would actually make things even worse for poor
schools.

"Reform of the teachers' contract is key to improving education in
New York City," Domanico says. "What's more, mandating such reform as
a part of the final remedy is consistent with the court's own
expressed goals." Domanico's report recommends that not a penny of
CFE-related school funding should flow to the city until Mayor
Bloomberg and the UFT first agree on contractual changes that will
permit more flexible staff assignment and compensation policies,
including pay incentives to attract higher quality teachers to the
students who need them most.

Of course, the state Legislature would never agree to such an
approach. But this is where Albany's gridlock could actually help the
situation. Pataki, the main defendant in the CFE case, is still free
to call for significant change in the teachers' contract as part of
his own submission to the court. His lawyers could persuasively argue
the state cannot possibly ensure a better education for all kids
unless a better contract is required as a quid pro quo for new aid.
The potential takeover of school-financing policy by the courts is a
yet another blow to representative democracy and orderly government
in the dysfunctional Empire State. But if Pataki seizes the
initiative - and if the courts follow his lead - CFE could
yet lead to changes in school management that have eluded generations
of political leaders in New York.

E.J. McMahon is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.


SCHOOL-FUNDING FANTASY
New York Post Editorial, Mar 30, 2004

Gov. Pataki's Commission on Education Reform set the stage yesterday for yet another huge cash bath for state schools.

The Zarb Commission (named for its chairman, Frank Zarb, former head of Nasdaq) recommended hiking school aid by $2.5 billion to $5.6 billion a year - terming that "a reasonable place to start."

The report comes in response to court decisions that found public education in New York to be erratically - and, often, insufficiently - funded.

Hence the pending cash bath: The lady in the corner wearing a big, fat smile is Randi Weingarten of the teachers' union - the big winner in all of this, along with the usual scavengers and opportunists who appear whenever a large sum of government money goes into play.

Or at least the prospect of a big-bucks payday appears. Whence the money to fund this particular flight of fancy? Still very much a mystery.

For starters, as the Manhattan Institute's E.J. McMahon notes on the opposite page, the state and local tax base already is dangerously over-stressed: There's just no money to fund even what Zarb recommends.

But here's the true bottom line: The folks whose analysis formed the basis of the Zarb panel's recommendation - Standard & Poor's - warned right up front of the folly of the exercise: "There is no guarantee," said S&P, "that the replication of higher spending levels will replicate higher achievement levels across the state."

It cited "decades of research" showing that factors such as "students' socio-economic and demographic circumstances, parent education levels . . . [and] family-school relations" are key to schools' success. What S&P diplomatically didn't mention was that such research suggests that money isn't key.

Translation: When parents participate in their children's education, most kids learn.

And when parents don't participate, most kids fail.

Certainly, no serious research has ever - ever - demonstrated a correlation between funding and student achievement.

Look at it this way:

* Underfunded parochial and strapped non-elite private schools do just fine in New York, thank you very much.

* The best-funded public-school system in the nation - the Empire State's - at best has a spotty performance record.

Education Week, a benchmark professional journal, ranks New York No. 1 nationally on funding "adequacy," a measure that tracks state and local spending. So while spending varies widely across the state, generally speaking, it goes from "adequate" to wildly profligate.

Yet Pataki and Zarb want to add billions more.

And they're the moderates. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are demanding a jump of some $11 billion.

Last week, phantasmagorgasts at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs announced it would take more than $26,000 per student - double today's levels - to get the job done adequately.

And Weingarten's wholly owned subsidiary, the state Legislature, has yet to be heard from in any meaningful manner. (And you wonder why she's smiling?)

OK, the state's top court ordered Albany to determine the cost of a "sound basic education" and ensure that Gotham schools get enough resources to offer that kind of education.

The gov - or, at least, his panel - could have responded by pushing for new approaches that tie spending to brand-new alternatives, like vouchers.

Zarb & Co. do call for an assortment of accountability reforms - closing dysfunctional schools after three years, mayoral governance in big cities, teacher-performance incentives - that may move things in the right direction.

But why not spread the wealth around to parochial and non-elite private schools that can provide real alternatives?

Would that be challenged in the court?

Sure.

In the Legislature?

Definitely.

But it would also serve as a demonstration project of sorts - illustrating that alternatives to the public-school cartel not only exist, but that they work.

Think of it as an exercise in imaginative leadership.

Instead, the governor is essentially seeking billions for the usual suspects.

And students?

Who gives a damn about them?


Also:

Think tank: Reform doomed without teacher contract changes
By Joel Stashenko, Boston.com, Associated Press Writer | July 13, 2004

LINK

ALBANY, N.Y. --Court-ordered changes in the way education aid is provided to New York City will fail to improve schools unless the city restructures the contract with its 100,000 teachers, a conservative think tank predicted Tuesday.

The Manhattan Institute said current teacher assignment practices, in which educators get the first shot at filling classroom openings based on seniority, tend to funnel the most experienced teachers into the best-funded school districts within the city. Those districts are generally not the ones teaching the "high-needs" students that the court found are being denied the "sound, basic" education they are guaranteed under the state's constitution, the Manhattan Institute said.

If the staffing situation continues under the changes the state has to make to comply with the court's mandate, the aid "reforms" will not work, said Manhattan Institute analyst E.J. McMahon.

He said changes in the contract with the United Federation of Teachers union should be a "make-or-break" issue in the state's response to the court directive in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity court case.

"The courts have made it clear that anything that stands in the way of a sound, basic education for disadvantaged kids is unconstitutional," McMahon said. "The state is well within its rights to use CFE as leverage to help the mayor get a more flexible contract."

A UFT spokesman said Tuesday that UFT President Randi Weingarten proposed incentive pay increases for teachers in the city's highest-needs schools.

In testimony at a New York City Council hearing last fall, Weingarten said it is a "myth" that seniority-based assignments have resulted in the most experienced teachers migrating to schools where they are needed the least. She said that in the 2002-03 school year, only about 600 of the 9,000 teachers hired by city schools were seniority transfers.

She blamed a 40 percent attrition rate among teachers in their first five years for leaving many high-needs schools with less-experienced teachers.

Contrary to the Manhattan Institute's contention, Weingarten also said schools have some flexibility in offering pay incentives to get more experienced teachers into high-needs schools and make them stay under the current contract with UFT.

The Manhattan Institute's predictions were based on a study by its senior education adviser, Raymond Domanico.

and,

LABOR CONTRACT COULD WASTE SCHOOL WINDFALL
Report Says Changes Needed in Teacher Deal
By WILLIAM F. HAMMOND JR. Staff Reporter of the NY Sun, July 14, 2004

LINK

ALBANY - The new money heading to the New York City public schools under last year's landmark court ruling will be wasted unless state lawmakers demand key changes in the city's labor contract with teachers, according to a new report from the Manhattan Institute.

Under the current contract, administrators cannot assign the best teachers to poor-performing schools or give them pay incentives to accept such jobs.

As a result, the best-paid, most-experienced teachers tend to gravitate to schools in well-to-do neighborhoods where they are needed least, according to the report by a former city schools official, Raymond Domanico.

The report urges state lawmakers to insist on changing these rules as part of their response to the ruling from the Court of Appeals, which declared that the city schools aren't providing the basic education mandated by the state constitution and ordered Albany to address the problem with more money.

Mr. Domanico said state officials should put strings on any new education aid to the city, to guarantee that it goes only to those schools that need it most.

The court order "can be the lever for changing a very flawed and wasteful approach to public school funding in New York State," wrote Mr. Domanico, a senior education adviser to the Metro New York Industrial Areas Foundation. "But if the case simply results in a new cycle of 'leveling up' spending across the board...it will be the latest cruel hoax to be foisted on both the state's most needy students and its taxpayers."

The court ordered state lawmakers to implement their solution by July 30, but so far the issue remains unresolved along with the rest of the state budget. Barring a last-minute compromise, Governor Pataki and the Legislature are likely to present competing plans to the court, leaving it up to Judge Leland DeGrasse of Manhattan - and advisers that he appoints - to craft a compliance plan.

Meanwhile, in contract negotiations with the United Federation of Teachers, the Bloomberg administration is pressing for the type of management flexibility that the Manhattan Institute report recommends.

On the other hand, Mayor Bloomberg has argued the state should not attach new mandates to its funding for schools.

A spokeswoman for the Education Department, Michele McManus, declined to discuss the report in detail, but confirmed that city officials want "structural changes" as part of their response to the court order.

"With the court's July 30 deadline soon upon us, it is well past time for Albany to get serious about meeting its legal obligation to New York City under the [school funding] lawsuit," Ms. Mc-Manus said.

In interview, the president of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said the union would support a 15% pay differential for teachers who work in poorperforming schools, but only in the context of across-the-board raises throughout the city. The Manhattan Institute proposal, she said, would result in a "Robin Hood" solution, attempting to improve the city's poor-performing schools at the expense of more successful ones.

"They still take the tack of bashing the teachers' contract and bashing the teachers," Ms. Weingarten said. "It's time to stop bashing and to start engaging in problem-solving."

Mr. Domanico argued that acrossthe-board spending increases are unlikely to improve education for the neediest students. Instead, they will create new jobs for teachers in the more desirable neighborhoods, aggravating a "brain drain" from struggling schools.

"Providing more money to all...will only make the situation worse,"he said. "Management has to have the prerogative in the school system to make some critical assignments and put people where they're needed most."

The report noted that per-pupil state aid to the city schools more than tripled over the past two decades, to about $5,000, with no significant impact on test scores or drop-out rates.

"If you spend the money in the same old way, you get the same old result - which is too many kids not getting a sound, basic education," said a budget analyst with the Manhattan Institute, E.J. McMahon.