October 29, 2007

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CFE: $$$ for high-needs schools

Filed under: Education by Maisie @ 5:14 pm

It took 13 years, but the Campaign for Fiscal Equity forced the state to start spending on poor children. After dickering while a whole generation of children passed through the school system, the state finally relented and allocated $7 billion in new education spending over the next four years. Real money. The possibility of real change.

So why does it feel as if nothing’s changed–or it’s changing in tiny increments? Where are the small class sizes? What’s up with universal pre-K? Why aren’t our middle schools restructured? What happened to serious mentoring of new teachers? And where are all the new school facilities?

Wait, they say. Rome wasn’t built in a day. But on the other hand, Rome might not have taken this long to build either. Patience, they say. (And you should have learned that in pre-K. But we don’t have pre-K! Well, you should have learned it anyway.)

Here’s the simple explanation: It’s a lot of money, but it has to go a long way. Four years of budgets, all around the state, to thousands of schools and districts. Maybe with all the places that need it, this money isn’t going to change anything at all.

Stop. Right. There. The CFE money wasn’t supposed to be spread around to everyone with a hand out. It was specifically won to benefit high-needs schools and to address the yawning achievement and resource gaps between poor and not-poor students.

Now CFE has analyzed the city’s plan for spending this new money and found that the budget directs more than 40 percent of the funds to schools where students are performing relatively well.

For example, it found almost $400,000 allocated to a school in Manhattan’s District 2 where 80 percent of students scored at Levels 3 or 4 on the 2007 ELA test. Another school in District 26 in Queens, the highest performing district in the city, got $454,000 and has 83 percent of its students at Levels 3 or 4. One high school with a 24.4 percent poverty rate and a 68 percent graduation rate is receiving $1.3 million.

Meanwhile, In District 17 in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, two elementary schools, with 40 percent and 36 percent meeting standards, respectively, are getting just $22,000 and $52,000. In District 23 in Oceanhill-Brownsville, one school with 61 percent of students meeting standards gets almost $500,000; another, with 31 percent passing, gets just $43,000.

Fortunately, the state Regents are starting to take an active role in overseeing this distribution of CFE funds, and they may be able to more closely target the money to schools that need it, to impoverished students and to schools that have long been underserved.

But don’t let the budget makers tell you, “It doesn’t amount to that much once you spread it around.” It’s billions of dollars and it could transform the neediest schools if it’s spent on them. There is great power in a concentration of resources; things don’t change in dribs and drabs.

UPDATE:  The other thing about funding is it has to actually get here.  Read Rep. Anthony Weiner’s startling new analysis of promised NCLB money that never got to New York.

3 Comments »

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  • I wonder if part of the problem with what happened with CFE is this: last Spring even though Klein knew the money was coming, he nonetheless destabilized the budgeting system into which is was to be poured. I am referring to the weighted funding scheme. It seems like a stupid move to try two budgeting shake ups at the same time. I can’t help wondering where that money would have wound up if he hadn’t done that.

    Comment by Jackie Bennett — October 30, 2007 @ 8:55 am

  • [...] CFE $$$ For High-Needs Schools: Read the United Federation of Teachers’ Blog about CFE Funds allocat… [...]

    Pingback by Campaign for Fiscal Equity — October 30, 2007 @ 10:48 am

  • Isn’t it part of Bloomberg’s “management style” to constantly shake things up to keep his managers nervous? I think Jackie’s comment about intentionally destabilizing the system is on target.

    That being said, there is intent here. There is intent not to decrease class-size. There is intent not to direct funds to the neediest.

    Malice on top of malice.

    Jonathan

    Comment by jd2718 — November 4, 2007 @ 12:34 pm

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