It was perhaps a foregone conclusion, but one cannot help but be struck by Tuesday's recommendations from a court-appointed panel of referees in the New York City school financing case: increased state aid eventually reaching $5.63 billion extra for Big Apple schools each year, plus an additional $9.17 billion for capital improvements. (A similar judgment was handed down the same day in a case concerning Texas's school financing system.) That almost $15 billion nearly matches the entire amount - $15.4 billion - that Albany provides in aid to all school districts in the state combined. Quite a payday, indeed, for Mayor Bloomberg (assuming the legislature actually agrees to such a budget) and cause for joy if you still believe that lack of money is what ails urban education. (Such believers usually turn out to have a strong stake in additional money from on high: mayors and school administrators and teachers unions and all the assorted hangers-on who make a living off public education.) The court managed to ignore a mound of evidence that there is no connection between increased funding and student performance and, no surprise, the unions are already pushing to extend the ruling to school districts "like Buffalo, Binghamton, and Beacon," as the NEA/New York's press release melodiously put it. Expect additional lawsuits. The best we can say about this farce is that perhaps we have here what anthropologists call a natural experiment. If New York goes on a spending spree for class size reductions, ill-designed pre-K, and all sorts of new consultants, as Chancellor Klein has already suggested he will do, without addressing any of the fundamental curricular, contractual, pedagogical, or structural problems facing city schools, and test scores still do not improve - then perhaps we'll be a step closer to putting the "spending adequacy" genie back into its bottle. Unfortunately, in the meantime, it's truly shameful that New York's ill-served school children will be forced to endure more - and boy, do we mean more - of the same.
"Down the rathole," New York Daily News, December 2, 2004
"Klein's big plans," by David Andreatta, New York Post, December 2, 2004
"School windfall," by Joe Mahoney, Kathleen Lucadamo, and Joe Williams, New York Daily News, December 1, 2004
"Court panel says New York schools need billions more," by Greg Winter, New York Times, December 1, 2004
"Funny money," New York Post, December 1, 2004
"New York City schools should get $5.6 bln, panel says," Bloomberg News, November 30, 2004
"NEA/NY salutes education funding settlement, asks to extend decision across NYS," NEA/New York press release, November 30, 2004
"Judge issue final ruling in Texas school funding case, finding the system 'unsuitable,'" by Kelley Shannon, Associated Press, November 30, 2004