Chart showing trends in K-3 class size. From Class Size Matters PowerPoint presentation. (Click to enlarge.)

Preliminary class size data that the city released today confirms what the teachers union has tallied: Class sizes are on the rise.

Classes grew most this year in kindergarten through third grade, where the average size increased by just under one student since last year to 23.1. On average, classes in those grades are now three students larger than they were in the 2006-2007 school year. They are largest in Queens and Staten Island and smallest in Manhattan.

Classes in those grades are now the largest they have been since 1998, according to a PowerPoint presentation prepared by parent activist Leonie Haimson for Class Size Matters, a group that she runs to advocate for smaller classes.

Class sizes have also inched up in upper elementary, middle, and high school grades, but not by as much, according to the city’s new numbers.

In all grades, average class sizes exceed the goals set forth in the 2007 Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit settlement, which required the state to earmark extra funds for New York City schools to use for six different purposes, including reducing class size.

Haimson’s presentation argues that the class size increases show that the city has misused the funds, known as Contracts for Excellence funds.

The city has argued that it has used the funds appropriately but cannot undo the effects of contracting state and local school budgets. When the UFT released its preliminary tally of oversized classes in September, a Department of Education spokesman, acknowledged that class sizes were likely to grow but downplayed the shift’s significance, saying that teacher quality trumped class size.

Today, another DOE spokeswoman, Barbara Morgan, said the increase was not as large as officials had believed possible. In May, when teacher layoffs were on the table, Chancellor Dennis Walcott warned that classes could grow by an average of two students.

“As a consequence of nearly $1.7 billion in state and federal budget cuts, we fully anticipated that class sizes would rise modestly and we are pleased that the increase is below what we initially projected,” Morgan said in a statement.

“We do expect class sizes to rise modestly as a consequence of nearly $1.7 billion in state and federal budget cuts that have forced us to more with less,” Thomas said at the time. “But we believe that getting effective teachers into every classroom is the most important stepping stone to student success, and we will continue to work toward that goal.”

Leonie Haimson’s PowerPoint on Contracts for Excellence spending and class size reduction

Panelists discuss a slate of new papers about school funding in New York at Teachers College Tuesday night.

Michael Rebell led the Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s landmark school finance lawsuit for 13 years, but for a long time the lawyer was conflicted about the case.

He believed what he ultimately convinced the courts: that the state had given New York City schools less than their fair share of funding. But he was also persuaded by a counter-argument that he heard during the litigation: that more money wouldn’t help schools whose biggest problem was poverty. And the lawsuit itself wasn’t helping him reconcile the tension.

“We have this adversary system for dealing with legal matters in our courts, where two warring sides take firm and opposite opinions,” he said. “The truth is sometimes more complicated than that.”

Now, months after CFE laid off its last employee and the state trimmed the equity dollars for the second time, Rebell is trying a different approach to advocate for poor students. As the director of the Campaign for Educational Equity, a think tank housed at Columbia University’s Teachers College, Rebell is setting out to win not a legal victory but the hearts and minds of policymakers.

His first step: To solicit a set of academic papers, released this week and discussed at Teachers College Tuesday night, that make the case for what he calls “comprehensive educational equity.” A main point of the papers is, as the CFE lawsuit contended and the New York Times reported earlier this week, that the state should give more to its schools — $4,750 per poor student, to be precise. But they also sketch out a policy platform that Rebell said could help close racial and class achievement gaps.

By redirecting existing funding streams and selling state bonds, the state could offer poor children health care, prekindergarten, and extended school days, the papers argue. Another paper costs out the up-front investment and found it would  pay off multiple times over because better educated people contribute more in taxes and require fewer social services.

In an interview yesterday, AFT President Randi Weingarten, who touted “community schools” that offer wraparound services in her first speech after taking over the national union in 2008, said deploying existing resources more efficiently could go a long way toward equalizing educational opportunity.

“In places like New York where you have mayoral control, there’s no reason why the mayor cannot manage the services that are directly under the mayor’s control,” she said.

But at a time when the state and many cities are cutting school funding, not augmenting it, convincing taxpayers to pitch in for children’s services could be a tough sell, panelists said at the presentation.

That’s especially true given that increases in school funding haven’t always translated into performance gains in the past, said State Education Commissioner John King.

“We have work to do to create a culture to support some of the research that’s here. We have work to do to convince people that another dollar invested will translate into better opportunities for kids,” he said. “And unfortunately in our sector that is not always the case. Part of that culture change will also be proving to people that we can deliver that.”

Rebell said he doesn’t expect new funding to start to flow overnight. Instead, he said, the research is meant to spark a conversation that could take years to have an impact.

Tomorrow, Rebell is set to give a lecture at Harvard Law School, whose flagship journal will publish his paper arguing that students have a legal right to educational equity. Massachusetts’ education chief will be in the audience, Rebell said, and that’s exactly the goal, at least for now.

“We’re not currently thinking in terms of a lawsuit,” he said. “I do think there is a real issue in terms of a legal right, but we’d rather see if we can get a positive reaction from public officials. … These are new ideas and we have an obligation to air the ideas.”

The organization’s last employee, Executive Director Helaine Doran, will leave at the end of the month because the group has run out of funding, the Times reports.

The development comes despite the fact that the dollars won by the group’s lawsuit have fallen far short of what was promised in a settlement between the group and the state in 2007.

The Times is right to describe the development as part of a greater shift in the way that philanthropists think about education advocacy, one that has made groups like former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee’s Students First active in New York City while the Campaign for Fiscal Equity struggled. The old mantra was that urban districts failed because they have been historically under-funded; now, advocates are more likely to argue that funding is necessary but not sufficient. (Another budget watchdog, the Educational Priorities Panel, dissolved in 2007, also due to a loss of funding.)

But it’s also possible that the dissolution of CFE could actually signal a renaissance of its original efforts: litigation aimed at forcing New York to spend more on needy school districts.

In recent years, employees at CFE had gone to Albany, not to the courts, to lobby for more funding to schools. That could now change as one of the strongest litigation groups working on school finance issues, the New Jersey-based Education Law Center, considers taking over where CFE left off.

The Education Law Center’s most recent victory came last month, when courts ordered Governor Chris Christie to spend an additional $500 million on needy school districts in the state next year.

“It’s really exciting that the Education Law Center is exploring how they can be involved with the Campaign for Fiscal Equity,” said Billy Easton, the executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education. The Alliance was formed to operate as a lobbying and organizing counterpart to CFE, and CFE representatives sat on AQE’s board, Easton said.

He said of the Education Law Center, “This is an organization with a 30-year history of repeated successful lawsuits on school funding.”

Doran did not respond to a request for comment tonight.

The budget, released today, proposes reducing statewide school spending by $1.5 billion from this year’s level. Activists said that would be the largest dollar figure cut to public schools in New York’s history.

The proposal would bring the state’s contribution to city schools close to the level received in 2007. That year ushered in substantial funding increases after a court ordered New York State to reduce historic funding inequities by pouring billions of extra dollars into the New York City schools.

Governor Andrew Cuomo's proposed budget for fiscal year 2011, denoted with the asterisk, would reduce the state's spending on New York City public schools to $7.5 billion.

Planned increases have since been frozen, cut, and now frozen again. Cuomo’s budget suggests postponing them into the future.

Mayor Bloomberg described the budget in drastic terms, comparing Cuomo’s proposed city schools allocation — $7.5 billion — to the figure state budget officials projected last year. That projection was $8.8 billion, a nearly $1.4 billion difference.

In a statement this afternoon, Bloomberg argued that a cut of that size would lead to “thousands of layoffs in our schools and across city agencies.” He pushed Cuomo and the state legislature to reduce the loss to city schools by cutting teacher pensions and loosening requirements for special education.

The New York City teachers union downplayed Cuomo’s budget. United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said that Chancellor Cathie Black should be able to make the needed cuts without laying off teachers.

“The Governor’s planned cut to New York City schools amounts to about three percent of the school system’s budget,” Mulgrew said in a statement. “We have every confidence that Cathie Black, whose management skills the Mayor has repeatedly cited, will be able to manage a reduction like this without laying off teachers and raising class sizes.”

The contrasting statements reflect the different political priorities of the union and the mayor. While the mayor has long argued for reductions in rapidly rising teacher pension costs, the teachers union has pushed the Bloomberg administration to preserve teacher benefits by cutting central programs instead, such as the data warehouse known as ARIS.

Last year, a similar back-and-forth — with Bloomberg warning of teacher layoffs and the union downplaying — ended when a combination of a wage freeze and the federal stimulus prevented any teacher layoffs. This year, there is no stimulus funding to plug holes.

“There’s no way that you’re not going to be cutting around the state teachers, programs, psychologists, librarians — you name it,” said Geri Palast, the executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. “This is going to be the worst year yet. There’s no question.”

Bloomberg’s teacher layoff predictions have swung wildly this year. He began 2011 by predicting that the city would have to lay off 6,100 teachers and by the end of last week, had reached an estimation of 21,000 teachers. He eventually backed away from that figure, noting that it was not feasible and promising to find other ways to make cuts.

In his statement on the governor’s budget, Bloomberg did not say how the proposed cuts would affect the city’s layoff estimates, though he numbered likely school layoffs in the “thousands.” He also called — again — for an end to seniority-based teacher layoffs and asked for the state’s help with rising education costs.

The governor’s budget does indicate that Cuomo intends to lower these types of mandated cost increases, but it’s not clear how. The budget states:

“State Aid reductions are coupled with a mandate relief effort, undertaken by Executive Order, which will lower the system-wide cost of providing education services, thus mitigating the impact of decreases in aid.”

Under Cuomo’s budget, the city would also lose $305 million in unrestricted aid that the mayor had figured into his 2012 budget projections. While that funding is not specifically set aside for schools, it could have been used as needed.

Cuomo’s budget also includes competitive funding pools — designed like state versions of the Race to the Top competition — that would reward school districts for cost-savings and academic improvement. He first proposed the pools last month.

Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed two new competitive education grants during his State of the State address today.

Two more Races to the Top could be coming to New York — this time courtesy of Governor Andrew Cuomo.

In his first State of the State speech today, Cuomo proposed creating two new competitive grant funds for state school districts, worth $250 million each.

The first grant would reward districts that boost students’ academic performance. The second would go to districts that find ways to cut costs that don’t affect the classroom.

It’s not yet clear if the addition of the grant competitions would alter the state’s current formula-based education model. But the governor was critical of the model, which he said gives districts no incentives to improve.

“Competition works,” Cuomo said, pointing to the state legislature’s passage of a charter cap lift bill as part of its (eventually successful) bid to win Race to the Top funds.

Cuomo’s plan would follow the lead of the federal government, which the governor said has “actually been more innovative in this area.” The U.S. Department of Education still doles out most of its money to states according to formulas, but under President Barack Obama has also begun granting billions of dollars based on the outcomes of competitions.

The state’s current formula — set after a landmark court win by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity in 2007 — doles out funds to school districts based on the number of students each serves. The formula gives districts more money for serving impoverished students, those learning English, and other high-needs students.

Geri Palast, executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, said that the governor should tread carefully in building an incentive-based funding model.  ”I think the notion of moving away from a formula is very dangerous, actually,” she said.

Heavily impoverished school districts — which tend to rely more on state funds than districts with wealthy tax bases — have already taken disproportionate hits in their funding because of state cuts, Palast said. She argued that changes to the state funding formula must be made with an eye toward ensuring an equal starting line for needy students.

“I’m not opposed to incentives; I think incentives are great,” she said. “But they have to be incentives on top of provisions in the law that provide for kids’ basic needs.”

Cuomo will not be the first governor to call for tying education funding to accountability measures. When former Governor Eliot Spitzer entered office, he promised to tie a pool of funds won through the CFE lawsuit to districts’ efforts to introduce a handful of innovations such as reducing class size and lengthening the school day.

But the state’s accountability program, known as Contracts for Excellence, failed to accomplish several of its goals. Class size in New York City, for example, has increased, and critics continue to contend that the city has used the money it received through the settlement not towards reducing class size, but rather to partially backfill money lost through system-wide budget cuts.

CFE found that eighth-grade attendance was more closely associated with graduation rates than any other variable.

City high schools that serve similar students graduate their students at wildly different rates, according to a report to be released today.

Among schools with the neediest students, one school graduated 90 percent of students in four years. Another graduated just 34 percent, the report found.

The report confirms that the city’s highest-performing schools overwhelmingly enroll students who already had high test scores and attendance rates. But it also shows that even among schools serving the highest-need students, some do a much better job graduating students than others.

The report was prepared by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the group that successfully fought for an extra $5.4 billion in 2004 for the city’s neediest schools.

The study looked at ninth graders who entered high school in 2004.  It separated high schools into peer groups based on the demographics and eighth-grade academic performances of that class.  (Read the full report here.)

Some of the report’s conclusions will not come as a surprise. Schools whose students had higher eighth-grade test scores had higher graduation rates, for example. And eighth grade attendance was the strongest predictor of a high school’s graduation rates, the report found.

Because high achievement and high attendance were strongly correlated with high graduation rates, selective schools and zoned schools in high-achieving districts performed much better than others. But even within school peer group, there were wide gaps in graduation rates.

The report reiterates concerns that impending higher graduation standards could have an outsized impact on city students. Just over 60 percent of the cohort that began school in 2004 graduated four years later. But only 42 percent earned a Regents diploma, the more rigorous of the state’s diploma levels that will soon become the standard for most students. And among schools serving the highest-needs students, the rate of students earning Regents diplomas ranged from zero to 83 percent.

City officials said that the report’s findings validate its move toward replacing large, struggling high schools with small ones. “This report confirms what a landmark study found in June—that, by creating hundreds of new, high quality options, our small school strategy is improving outcomes for our neediest students,” said DOE spokesman Matt Mittenthal, referring to an MDRC study that found that the city’s small, non-selective high schools boost needy students’ chances of graduating.

The report did find that among schools with the lowest-achieving incoming ninth-graders, schools with high graduation rates did tend to be smaller than schools with low rates. But many small schools posted low rates and many large schools posted high ones, prompting the study’s authors to tentatively conclude that other factors like instructional strategy are critical to a school’s success, whatever its size.

Figuring out exactly what those factors are will be the focus of CFE’s next report, said Helaine Doran, the group’s deputy director. By studying the schools with high-risk students that also posted high graduation rates, CFE hopes to identify best practices. ”How do you share these practices that clearly some are figuring out?” Doran said.

CFE argues that schools that serve large numbers of needy students should receive a greater share of the funding won in the 2004 Contracts for Excellence settlement. But determining how schools should spend that money is equally important, Doran said.

“The resources have to be spent right,” she said. “And as budgets are getting tighter, we have to disseminate best practices.”

DOE chief operating officer Photeine Anagnostopoulos told the City Council education committee this morning that it was realistic to expect the city to “adjust” its class size targets. How dramatic the increases will be is still unclear, she said.

“We have to go back and do some more homework,” Anagnostopoulos said.

Anagnostopoulous’ comments came during a hearing on the department’s use of state Contracts for Excellence funding. The funds are given to school districts that prove they will spend the funds in six key areas, one of which is class size reduction.

As part of the legal settlement that established the funds, the city was required to adopt a five-year plan for class size reduction. Under that agreement, which the state approved in 2007, the city planned to reduce class size to around 20 students in kindergarten through third grade, around 23 students in grades four through eight by the 2011-12 school year.

That plan was made under the assumption that the amount of state money would increase each year, Anagnostopolous said. This year, in the face of a severe budget deficit and looming cuts, the state froze the funds and planned to grant the city the same amount it received last year.

“Now we have two years with no new money,” Anagnostopolous said.

Anagnostopoulos said that though the total amount of Contracts for Excellence funding will remain constant this school year, how the money is spent will change.

A growing number of principals have decided to spend their funds not on reducing class size, but in one of the program’s other key areas, Agnostopolous said.

“It’s likely that the combination of budget cuts and rising costs created a situation where principals felt that other strategies would be more effective and achievable than class size reduction,” she said. She later pointed to an increase in funding for programs for English language learners as an example of where principals may be redirecting their spending.

Leonie Haimson, executive director of the non-profit Class Size Matters, disputed this claim in testimony later in the hearing. She pointed to responses to her organization’s survey of principals that suggests many principals believe their large class sizes prevent them from providing a quality education to their students.

Anagnostopoulos spent much of the rest of the hearing defending the department’s handling of the public comment process on how the funds should be spent. While most school districts in the state held their mandatory hearings on the funds over the summer, the city DOE delayed their hearings until after the school year began.

Anagnostopoulos defended the decision to hold the hearings later in the year, saying that it did not make sense to hold hearings on the funds until after the overall city budget was set.

She added that the move was intended to increase public participation in the hearings, though she said the department had not compiled numbers on how many people attended the hearings, which took place at the first meeting of each local district’s Community Education Council.

A representative of the group that brought the lawsuit which resulted in the state funds said that was no excuse for delaying the hearings. “The time line really makes a mockery of the process,” said Helaine Doran, deputy director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity.

The hearing also resurrected a debate over whether the city is using the state funds to supplement its own budget, or using the state funds instead of allocating city money to areas like class size reduction. Under the state legislation establishing the fund, the city is required to use the funds “supplement, not supplant” its own spending, which Anagnostopolous said the city was doing.

Doran and Eric Weitman, the New York City advocacy director for the Alliance for Quality Education, charged that the city had cut more from the budgets of the highest needs schools. The result, they said, was that the Contracts for Excellence funds are being used to fill in the gaps.

“We think supplanting is still on the table here,” Doran said.

The Alliance for Quality Education made the same argument in a new report on how the city is using its Contracts for Excellence spending, timed to coincide with the hearing. The report is not available on the AQE website, but here it is in full:

The hearings happen because Contracts for Excellence dollars are only doled out to districts that prove they will spend the money in certain kinds of programs pre-approved by state school officials.

But this summer, the New York City Department of Education skipped over the mandated date for hearings, which are supposed to occur in all five boroughs, without holding them. A public comment period will be postponed until the fall, but New York state plans to send the city the funds anyway, before that happens.

“Funds that are continuing last year’s Contract can be used,” a state education spokesman, Jonathan Burman wrote in an email. The “commissioner’s approval is required before funds allocated to new purposes can be used.” The state’s grim financial picture has meant that the city won’t receive any more Contracts dollars than it did last year.

An official at the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, whose lawsuit alleging that the city schools are historically under-funded by the state led to the creation of the Contracts for Excellence fund, said that the state’s logic makes little sense given the tough fiscal climate.

“Because there’s no new money this year, the critical importance of this year’s hearings is to ensure that the money continues to be invested with the neediest schools and students,” Geri Palast, the executive director of the campaign, said. “And to ensure that the money continues to be spent in the 6 strategic areas so we can continue to demonstrate that the money does makes a difference in students’ performance.”

Burman said the state had yet to settle on a schedule for the city’s public hearings. Asked why the hearings had been delayed, he responded, “Why don’t you ask NYC?”

According to a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Education, Ann Forte, the hearings were detained by “uncertainty” about what this year’s education budget would look like.

“Last spring, there was much uncertainty about what school budgets would look like for the 2009-2010 school year,” Forte wrote in an email. “At that time, federal stimulus dollars were still being allocated to schools. We are now working with the State to finalize a new Contracts for Excellence timeline.”

Burman said that the state had not yet approved Syracuse and Rochester’s contracts. City officials in these cities did not return calls for comment.

Amber Dixon, the director for evaluation, accountability, and project initiatives for the Buffalo school district, said Buffalo had held the hearings on schedule. “Buffalo was never asked to postpone anything about the Contract for Excellence. We submitted it on time, we held our hearings on time, and we approved it,” she said, adding, “Our budget is nothing compared to the New York City budget.”

“This is just another of the DOE’s evident lack of interest in complying with state law,” Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters, a New York City nonprofit, said. “They just don’t care and it’s time that the state calls them on it,” she said.

Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that the state had allowed the city to skip the hearings process. The hearings have only been delayed. Burman also clarified that while the state has not yet approved Syracuse and Rochester’s contracts, that process has not been delayed.

This screenshot from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity's overcrowding Web site shows the distribution of city schools that are over 150% capacity.

A long-awaited report about the extent of overcrowding in the city schools was released today, showing that more than half a million city children attend school in buildings that crowded beyond capacity.

The group that put together the report, The Campaign for Fiscal Equity, also launched an interactive Web site aimed at spurring action to reduce the overcrowding. The Web site, OvercrowdedNYCschools.org, includes a searchable map of overcrowded school buildings, instructions for how to urge the city to improve its school building plan, and links to the report, titled “Maxed Out,” and the data used to compile it.

I used the site’s map tool to plot school buildings that are at 150 percent capacity or higher and found 117 schools that fell into that category. As the picture to the right shows, the most overcrowded school buildings are located on Staten Island and in Queens.

Helaine Doran, CFE’s deputy director, said in early February that the group’s overcrowding report would be released in a matter of days. At the time, Department of Education officials said alleviating crowding to the degree CFE is urging, by reducing class sizes, would cost upwards of “tens of billions” of dollars in both capital and operating expenses.

UPDATE: I just heard from Doran about why the report’s release was delayed from February until now. The sheer volume of data made getting the analysis “not so easy to square,” she said, and the group took some extra time to decide what on a strategy to recommend the city use in addressing the overcrowding program. But she said, “We think we have it right.”

But union president Randi Weingarten, a supporter of the case and the groups that filed it, is taking a different point of view. In a statement she just released, she declares that the state budget “reaffirms Albany’s commitment” to the lawsuit. The Campaign for Fiscal Equity, she says, “was deferred but not denied.”

The state budget erases two years of increases in funding that would have grown to more than $5 billion by 2011, postponing them until the future. Only 37.5% of the funds promised over a four-year period have been doled out so far. The Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s executive director, Geri Palast, has repeatedly said that state lawmakers should give the city a “down payment” of funds for next year.

Here’s her full statement:

Given the severe economic conditions facing our state, this budget in many ways has been a story of survival. Protecting children’s educational services is and always has been our top priority. That is why we fought so hard for the federal stimulus funding and the progressive income tax, both of which helped the Governor and the State Legislature deliver a budget that protects schools, health care and the most vulnerable in the wake of a $ 16 billion deficit.

The kids in New York City could have suffered terribly, but thanks to the efforts of many, we have averted the most serious anticipated damage. We will see cuts to programs, but core services should be salvaged and layoffs should be averted.

The new budget also reaffirms Albany’s commitment to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which was deferred but not denied, and it rejects a Tier V, which would have been a step in the wrong direction for working families all across the state. In addition, it restores funding for Teacher Centers, which are integral to the training and retaining of quality classroom teachers, and adds much stronger class size accountability language.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Governor Paterson, Speaker Silver and Majority Leader Smith for standing tall for our teachers and public schools. They recognize, just as President Obama does, the importance of keeping people working and keeping the economy moving.

I also want to thank Mayor Bloomberg for his advocacy on behalf of public schools, as well as the State Legislature, the City Council and, most of all, the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who attended our rallies and helped fight for their neighborhood schools.

If this were a marathon, however, we still have the hardest part of the race ahead of us. The city is still facing a deficit and schools still face cutbacks. We must work with our allies in New York City, and hopefully the Mayor and the City Council will continue the momentum and protect against direct service cuts to kids.

The budget erases two years of planned increases in funds to New York City and other needy school districts, postponing them to the future. In a letter sent to Duncan yesterday, the groups, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity and the Alliance for Quality Education, also criticize the way the budget spreads out the state’s pot of federal education stimulus dollars, a $2.5 billion total, between the state’s school districts.

The call for Duncan’s intervention hinges on language in the stimulus law passed by Congress, which urges states to prioritize “equity and adequacy adjustments” passed in state laws when doling out their stimulus dollars to schools. The groups argue that New York’s budget “appears to be in violation” of that language.

The “adjustment” in question in New York is the extra $5.4 billion the state vowed in 2007 to send needy districts by 2011, part of the settlement of a decade-long lawsuit by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. So far, less than half (37.5%) of that money’s been doled out. But the current budget would erase the added funds that were planned for the next two fiscal years.

The groups are asking Duncan either to force New York lawmakers to dole out more of the stimulus funds to needy districts like New York City — or to require that the lawmakers write a plan for doing that next year. More of the details on what the groups would like to see Duncan do are in this letter, which they sent to Duncan yesterday.

The groups have some reason to think that the Obama administration will support their effort. Geri Palast, the executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, said that she and other supporters of court-mandated increases in funding to public schools lobbied to put the language into the stimulus law that they are now using to defend their case. Palast served as an adviser to Obama on education during his transition.

She said she and other advocates had their eye on court settlements like New York’s Campaign for Fiscal Equity case when they pushed for the language. (At least a half-dozen other states have similar cases.)

“Now the secretary will have to make the decision about exactly how important that language is,” said Billy Easton, the executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, the Albany-based group that is closely allied with the Campaign for Fiscal Equity.

The Journal News first reported on the letter yesterday. Here’s the full text:

The state has been using student test scores to make the list of schools placed “under registration review” since 1989. Every year, the state makes avoiding the list slightly harder, by raising the bar for how many students need to pass exams. Schools placed on the list risk being shut down; of the more than 300 schools placed on the list since 1989, 228 have been removed. Today’s list, which includes 43 schools statewide, takes into account test scores from last school year, which skyrocketed across the state in reading and math for students between grades 3 and 8.

Thirteen New York City schools improved their test scores enough to climb off the list of schools categorized as being “under registration review,” while four city schools joined the list. Another three city schools would have joined the list, but are being shut down by the city.

As Elissa Gootman reports at CityRoom, the Times metro blog, two of the four city schools joining the list — West Bronx Academy and New Explorers High School — are among the recent new small schools created by Mayor Bloomberg as part of his effort to improve the school system. The other schools are Boys and Girls High School and PS 230 in the Bronx. Three schools, Samuel Tilden High School, a large high school in Brooklyn, Business School For Entrepreneurial Studies in the Bronx, and South Shore High School in Brooklyn, would have been put on the state failing list but are being shut down by the city.

The state designations differ from city accountability grades, which, rather than simply checking whether students passed or not, compare schools to others with similar numbers of disadvantaged students and give them credit for progress their students make on tests. New Explorers and West Bronx Academy got a B and C grade respectively on the city’s progress report.

Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein said in statements that the low number of schools on the list reflects their success at turning the school system around. The total number of city schools on the list is 20 this year, down from 32 last year.

The Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a nonprofit that fights for more money to go to the city school system, put out a statement saying the reductions should be seen as evidence the extra billions the state poured into the city schools is working — and reason not to make budget cuts to schools next year.

Below is a chart the Department of Education made to illustrate the trend:

The idea also bothers Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, who pointed out to me earlier today that the state actually increased funding to schools this year, while the city’s budget cuts came with a promise that classrooms would be insulated. “What they’re trying to do is confuse people about the current economic situation to somehow excuse the fact that class sizes went up in the past,” Haimson said.

The economy explanation first arose in a Power Point released today, and the DOE is sticking to it. On the telephone this afternoon, a spokesman, Will Havemann, said the rising class sizes can be traced back to a cut to schools of about $100 million in October, on top of another $100 million cut to schools in the middle of last year. The idea is that, with less money to spend, principals have decided not to hire additional staff when people retire. Not replacing retiring teachers means class sizes get bigger. Havemann said the city this school year had 440 fewer teachers working directly with students than it had the year before.

He said economic projections could also be behind the reduced teacher corps. “It’s altogether reasonable that as principals see the economic writing on the wall, that they’ll anticipate future cuts, and they’ll be more conservative about how they hire teachers,” he said.

Havemann raised one more explanation: that the $150 million wasn’t actually spent to reduce class sizes. The figure is the amount the DOE told the state it intended to spend on class-size reduction this year, based on principals’ reports of what they planned to do. It does not reflect what principals actually did. Havemann said the DOE is analyzing whether principals who said they intended to spend money on class-size reduction actually did so.

The $150 million came to the city through state grants earmarked for a set of six possible programs, including class-size reduction. The grants are the result of the dozen-year-long Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, whose settlement called not only for more state funding to the New York City schools but also funds that would be directed straight to specific kinds of uses.

The city could face trouble with the state if it turns out that the principals did not use the dollars, known as Contracts for Excellence funds, towards those goals. State and city officials have tossled over class size in the past, and both state and city elected officials have chastised the Department of Education for flouting the state’s intentions with the CFE money.

Helaine Doran, deputy director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, just said that CFE would release a report next week saying that 501,632 students in the city attend school in an overcrowded building.

CFE’s numbers would mean that about 46 percent of the city’s approximately 1.1 million students attend overcrowded schools — far more than the 38 percent that the advocacy organization Class Size Matters calculated last year. Class Size Matters used the Department of Education’s school capacity and enrollment data to come up with its figure; Doran didn’t say today how CFE arrived at its calculation.

Doran said the overcrowding developed over a long period of time. “I’ve been in this school system a long time and the number even startled me,” Doran said. “We just didn’t get there.”

“The Campaign for Fiscal Equity Lawsuit Was the Best Hope for City Schools. It Failed.”

Michael Rebell, the lead attorney on the lawsuit and a professor at Teachers College at Columbia, is objecting to this headline, on the grounds that CFE succeeded at its goal of pumping money into the system and at setting a legal precedent for how much money is constitutionally required. (For the record, Rebell says he does agree with the “basic thrust” of the piece, which takes the subtler tack of listing advocates’ many disappointments with the lawsuit’s aftermath.)

Now, as a blogger I have pretty much permanently lost access to the “I don’t write the headlines” excuse. But in this case, I did not, in fact, write the headline. I wouldn’t have, either. I like to be provocative. But I don’t think that the CFE lawsuit was necessarily the “best hope” for the city schools, and I don’t think that what has happened since should necessarily be labeled a total failure.

I bet other people might disagree with me and with Rebell, though. Anyone?

Footnote: Neil, who did write the headline, tells me it is a reference to the television show Babylon 5.

UPDATE: The print-version headline is a little less strong, calling the lawsuit the “last, best hope,” rather than just “best hope,” which is a little jokier.

UPDATE2: Leonie Haimson’s thoughts on the subject are here.

When I talked earlier this week to the Helaine Doran, the deputy director of the group that filed the lawsuit, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, she was cautious about legal action. “We have no process of like, ‘Oh yes, we’re going back to court immediately,’” she said. “You have to look at the numbers and figure it out.” But there’s growing momentum suggesting court may be a possibility.

Michael Rebell’s editorial in the Daily News today uses stronger language. Rebell, a Columbia professor who was one of the lead attorneys in the original suit, calls Governor Paterson’s proposed budget, which would cut school funding below this school year’s level, “illegal” and “unconstitutional.” In a sign that he’s serious about follow-through, he also defines what wouldn’t be illegal: Maintaining an increase in funds, but slowing its rate. He says that option is troubling but “does not raise the same constitutional issues.”

Billy Easton, who is the executive director of the campaign’s Albany counterpart, the Alliance for Quality Education, is also making it clear that he thinks Governor Paterson’s budget isn’t just upsetting but illegal. He told me last night, “The increased school funding and the CFE funding is part of law. It’s not a promise. It’s a law pursuant to a court order.”

Now that budget proposals are not only not following up on those increases but also cutting away from what was given last year, the group that filed the lawsuit in the first place — the Campaign for Fiscal Equity — is pushing back. The group will be lobbying the legislature hard to say no to Paterson’s budget. Their better idea for how to tackle the state’s giant deficit: tax the affluent, the proposal the Working Families Party has floated.

Helaine Doran, the campaign’s deputy director, said officials are also consulting with their lawyers. “We have no process of like, ‘Oh yes, we’re going back to court immediately,’” she said on the phone this afternoon. “You have to look at the numbers and figure it out. We have geniuses helping us.”

CFE will be joined by the teachers union in lobbying the legislature to make fewer cuts to the city school system. Randi Weingarten called the proposals “chilling” in a statement yesterday that estimated the overall impact to city schools — state and city cuts combined — at $1 billion.

Weingarten’s full response, plus a long press release from CFE and other education advocates who are joining them in fighting the budget cuts, are below.

Weingarten’s statement:

We know that the situation is daunting and appreciate Governor Paterson’s predicament. We are relieved that his budget acknowledges the need for new revenues, not just cuts. But while we understand that the struggling economy prevents us from moving forward as planned with monies won for students in the CFE lawsuit, New York State cannot move backward by making devastating cuts to schools that will affect the classroom. Kids did not create this crisis, and they should not bear the burden of it. Kids don’t get a second chance, and therefore we cannot turn back the clock.

We will work with the Governor and the Legislature in a productive way, championing a tripartite solution that includes a federal stimulus program as well as more progressive ways of revenue raising. We recognize some cuts are inevitable, but the magnitude of what is currently proposed is chilling. Between the loss of $645 million in expected school aid increases and more than $200 million in cuts, the New York City schools will receive $850 million less than promised. To make matters worse, the school system will have $660 million less than it would need to just maintain the present level of services. When we factor in proposed city cuts, we are looking at more than $1 billion in cutbacks, the most since the fiscal crisis of the 1970’s.

We will also fight hard on other issues, such as maintaining economic security and the professional tools we need like the teacher centers, which are a key professional development tool vital to the districts that saw a large growth in test scores. If we really want to help kids and eliminate the achievement gap, it would be a mistake to eliminate programs that have successful track records.

The Campaign for Fiscal Equity and other groups’ statement, titled “Educating Our Children vs. Protecting the Wealthy”:

(Albany, NY) The Alliance for Quality Education (AQE), the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE), Citizen Action of New York (CANY), the New York Immigration Coalition, New York City Coalition for Educational Justice, Education Voters and Advocates for Children of New York called Governor Paterson’s 2009 executive budget proposal unfair and unreasonable. The Governor’s budget cuts committed education funding by more than $2.5 billion.  The Governor’s budget would deliver $698 million less in funding next school year than in the current year, but as the Governor’s own budget asserts the actual cut in committed school funding that will be used to close the state’s deficit is $2.5 billion.  (2009-10 Executive Budget Briefing Book page 50).

The groups are calling for a balanced approach to closing the budget with options that include upwards of $5 billion in new revenue by increasing taxes on New Yorkers who earn at least $250,000 annually. The school aid cuts contained in the Governor’s proposal undermine the state’s constitutional obligation to substantially increase funding in under-funded and high needs school districts as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit. The $2.5 billion proposed reduction in committed funding represents the largest proposed school aid cut in the history of the state.

“The governor has shifted the unbearable burden of closing the budget gap onto the shoulders of school children while sparing the wealthiest New Yorkers. Asking school children to sacrifice $2.5 billion in school funding to pay for the state’s deficit problems while requiring nothing from New York’s highest income earners is irresponsible,” said, Billy Easton, Executive Director of the Alliance for Quality Education.

“Governor Paterson’s proposed education budget gets a failing grade.  By cutting $2.5 billion from committed funding, and extending the CFE phase-in from four to eight years, he is turning back the clock on the state’s legislated obligation to keep the CFE promise.  By refusing to propose progressive across the board revenue options, New York’s 15 year education budget deficit will now grow to 21 years, and the price will be paid by our neediest students.  Simply put, the Governor is using bad arithmetic.  The future of our neediest students and their constitutional rights must not be subtracted from our state’s budget,” said Geri D. Palast, Executive Director, Campaign for Fiscal Equity.

A poll released this week by the Working Families Party shows that 75% of New Yorkers oppose cuts to school aid and 75% support income tax hikes on those earning over $200,000.  A second poll released by the Citizens Committee for Children of New York found that 77% of New Yorkers favored income tax hikes on those making over $250,000 as opposed to the property tax hikes that will result from cuts in state school aid.

“Cuts in school aid will not only harm children, they will also damage our state’s fragile economy. Our children’s future and our State’s economic future both require that we balance the budget by asking the wealthiest New Yorkers to pay their fair share, rather than cutting school aid.  After years of under funding and delays, the state finally committed to reducing class size, investing in teacher quality, and expanding reading, math, after school, pre-school and English language learner programs.  These budget cuts would undo these advancements and be a huge setback for students,” said Karen Scharff, Citizen Action of New York Executive Director.

The Governor’s budget proposal contains provisions to preserve the Contract for Excellence, a system of school district accountability enacted in 2007 that is tied to the new funding invested.  While there is a slight reduction in the amount that is covered by individual school district Contracts for Excellence, the vast majority of funding that is currently invested in Contract programs will continue to be covered by the Contracts as a result of protections proposed by the Governor.

“Preserving the Contract for Excellence as the Governor has proposed is essential to ensuring that the vast majority funding invested in school reforms the past two years is not wasted,” said Easton.  “Without legislative changes to protect the Contracts for Excellence, the money invested these past two years in smaller classes and educational reforms would be subject to no accountability.”

“The Contract for Excellence, the only accountability tool that ensures that the CFE dollars are invested in the neediest students in strategies that work–teacher quality, smaller classes, English Language Learner programs, middle and high school reform, and full day pre-k–must be protected,” said Palast. “Legislative changes similar to those proposed by the Governor are essential to continue the investments from the first two years, and to ensure that any new investments now and in future years are properly allocated. What’s more, the Contracts are the only means for tracking the dollars, determining the impact on student achievement, and whether, at the end of the day, every public school child receives their constitutionally protected sound basic education. ”

“Here in Albany we’ve just begun to move forward with continued advancements in teacher quality initiatives and extended day programs. There are still improvements that need to be made and these cuts will stifle our progress and immediately affect the quality of education our students are receiving. We cannot balance our budget on the backs of our children,” said Ivette Alfonso, Capital District AQE board member.

“The law has already spoken when it comes to providing funding for a quality education for our kids.  With the unprecedented win of the CFE lawsuit, and the further monetary award that provides New York City school kids with a chance for a quality education, it is perfectly clear that our governor intends to break the law, and rob our kids of their opportunity to get a quality education. The answer is not to rob our kids, but to make the wealthiest NYer’s give their fair share to balance the budget,” Ocynthia Williams, Parent Leader with the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice.

“The Governor is attempting to balance the budget by over burdening hard working families and cutting school aid and other critical services while not asking New York’s highest income earners to pay their fair share.  We can and must do better to create a future that prepares our children for success in the knowledge economy of the 21st century,” said Glynda Carr, Education Voters Executive Director.

“We’re particularly concerned about the most at-risk kids in the system, such as students with disabilities, English language learners, or students in foster care.  These are the kids who tend to be hurt first when budgets start contracting,” said Kim Sweet, Executive Director, Advocates for Children of New York.

“These cuts will be devastating for our most at-risk students.  Even as immigrant and English-language-learner graduation rates continue to plummet, the Governor chose to slash education funding, making a desperate situation even worse,” said Jose Davila, director of state government affairs with the New York Immigration Coalition.

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The following is an excerpt from the 2009-10 Executive Budget Briefing Book:

“Overall, the Executive Budget provides $20.7 billion for School Aid in 2009-10, a decrease of $698 million or 3.3 percent from 2008-09.  Even after this reduction, School Aid will have increased $6.2 billion or 42 percent compared to 2003-04.  Without these actions, total 2009-10 School Aid funding was projected to total $23.2 billion, $2.5 billion higher than the Executive Budget proposal.”

In the process, the report also discloses a lot of interesting facts. For instance, check out the chart above. The “Big 4″ cities — Rochester, Syracuse, Yonkers, and Buffalo — are a group that New York City is often compared to: large urban cities facing fairly similar challenges. But, according to the chart, the state is giving the Big 4 almost double the amount of funding per student that it is giving New York City. New York City is also getting less money per student from the state than districts labeled as “high-needs.”

I realize I’m not the first to point out that New York City gets less money. That was, of course, the whole point of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, settled recently after 14 long years of litigation. The CFE payments are just starting to trickle in; they first came to New York City last school year, and more are scheduled for the future (although those are now in jeopardy, due to the fiscal disaster). But the fact that people already spent 14 years trying to correct the gap doesn’t make it less shocking. It makes it more.

Can someone explain? Geri Palast?

While school aid reductions remain on the table, it is unlikely the Legislature will consider them any time soon. Therefore, we would be well into the final quarter of our fiscal year and even further into the school year before any action would likely occur.

So mid-year is off the table, but Paterson says that means cuts next year will have to be much worse; the state simply cannot afford to ramp up school spending as it had been doing, he wrote.

The Campaign for Fiscal Equity has already pushed out a response to this letter. The group, which led the 14-year-long lawsuit asking for more funding for New York City schools, asks Paterson to find ways to raise revenues before cutting budgets. One idea is to raise income taxes on wealthy New Yorkers.

The full letter is below the jump, and for a review of all planned budget cuts, see my cheat sheet here.

November 25, 2008

The Honorable David A. Paterson
State Capitol
Albany, NY 12224

Dear Governor Paterson:

This afternoon you issued an open letter to School Board Presidents and District Superintendents warning them of major cuts to education in next year’s state budget.  Your warning would be more favorably viewed if you considered responsible, fair, and economically sound ways to raise revenues.

We are writing to respectfully urge you to consider revenue enhancing solutions to alleviate the need for massive cuts to our schools which are only now on the road to adequate funding.

There are a number of state revenue options available for your consideration ranging from the Bigger Better Bottle Bill to collection of taxes on cigarettes sold on reservations to bulk purchasing of prescription drugs for state workers. However, one that deserves particular attention is restoring fairness to the state’s income tax by creating additional tax brackets on the state’s wealthiest, as was done during the 2003 economic crisis.  The richest New Yorkers currently pay a much smaller percentage of their incomes than do middle class and low-income families.

This solution is both fair and economically sound.  It will help maintain our commitment to our children, while stimulating the economy through continued investment in salaries and infrastructure.  As Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote to you in March, “It is economically preferable to raise taxes on those with high incomes than to cut state expenditures.”

For 14 years CFE led the litigation that established the constitutional right to a sound basic education for all public school students in New York. The final court order requires that the State provide adequate resources to fund this right.  The legislation passed to address the court’s order provides a four year commitment to fulfill the constitutional mandate.   We urge you to see that the state finds the means to meets its obligation – even during these trying economic times.

Your failure to consider ways to raise revenue does injustice to our communities and to our children’s futures.  We hope that you will take every opportunity to minimize the pain of this fiscal crisis.

Sincerely,

Geri D. Palast                                                              Billy Easton
Executive Director                                                      Executive Director
Campaign for Fiscal Equity                                        Alliance for Quality Education

At present, funding for English Language Learners (ELLs) is approximately 1.5 times that of regular education students.

While the brief does not say how much additional funding the state should provide per pupil, EdWeek blogger Mary Ann Zehr estimated it at about $6,500 more for each ELL student than what is spent today.

Adding that much per student would be expensive. The study calculates that New York State would have to spend a total of $3.64 billion on ELLs, about 17% of total state aid to schools.

This sounds like a lot given looming state budget cuts, but the brief’s authors say it’s reasonable. “Given that ELLs make up 13% of the total student population and have one of the highest dropout rates in New York, the ELL Costing Out Study provides a sensible estimate of what it will take to provide ELLs with the adequate education they need and deserve,” they conclude.

The extra costs were calculated from a run-down of successful programs for teaching English Language Learners, such as class-size reduction, intensive coaching for teachers, and expanding pre-K and full-day kindergarten.

According to the policy brief, the META study was commissioned to correct inadequacies in earlier studies of the cost of educating all students in New York State, which were used as evidence in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s lawsuit challenging the legality of state funding formulas. Those studies included the needs of ELLs within the needs of all students in poverty, rather than looking at their needs separately, as they did for students with special needs. As a result, they underestimated the additional resources required to educate ELLs, the authors say.

Finally, as Zehr pointed out in her post, the brief’s authors question whether funding allocated to ELLs actually reaches them and emphasize the need for better monitoring of how funding is used. Similar concerns were raised this summer by ELL advocates at public hearings on the city’s Contracts For Excellence plan.