Tag: Education

The U.S. Census Bureau has released its education finance data for the 2005-2006 school year, with information available on revenues by source and expenditures by type for every school district in the United States. I’ve summed this information to create totals for the United States, New Jersey, New York State, the Downstate Suburbs, Upstate New York, and New York City, divided the totals by the number of students to get per student figures, adjusted the per student figures for the cost of living for the higher cost Downstate and New Jersey areas, and adjusted 2002 data for inflation for a comparison with 2006. The data is in two attached spreadsheet, one a summary by broad areas with a comparison with FY 2002, and the other with data for every school district in New York State in 2006. I suggest that New York State residents outside New York City download these spreadsheets, look them over, and think about them before voting on their school budgets.

When I first started compiling public finance data many years ago, what stood out was how low New York City’s elementary and secondary school spending was, as a share of the income of its residents, despite very high local taxes. As will be described briefly below and in more detail in the next post, however, New York City was already spending plenty of money in FY 2006 based on the national average, even before the “historic” (in ex-Governor Spitzer’s words) increases in state school aid over the past two years. High by national standards, the city’s spending remains far lower than in other parts of the state. That, however, is not because the city’s school spending is low, but because spending elsewhere in New York State — already high a decade ago — is now unreasonably high. So high, in fact, that one wonders what share of the money is actually going to education. Unreasonably high spending elsewhere in the state, rather than low spending in New York City, is now the biggest education finance problem for New York.

A quick look at the website of the Fiscal Policy Unit of the New York State Department of Education shows the school finance data for the 2005 to 2006 school year has been released. That year, and the following year, was probably as good as it is going to get for the New York City public schools. The New York State Court of Appeals subsequently ruled that although it was wrong for the state legislature to make financial arrangements that eliminated the possibility of many NYC children receiving a decent education, there would be no consequences for those who benefited from those arrangements in the past, and no judicial restrictions on doing so again in the future. The pattern of New York City’s state education funding being cut, while that for the rest of the state is increased, in recessions is therefore likely to recur. Also recurring are pension enhancements for those cashing and moving out, paid for by reduced pay for future teachers and reduced services for NYC children, with a recent massively-costly example just enacted. With doom once again approaching, let’s look at the “good old days” for the public schools.

Mayor Bloomberg and the UFT have agreed to allow teachers to retire with full pension and health benefits at age 55, pending approval by the state legislature (which has already passed the deal unanimously before, with Pataki’s veto). You find out about that, and not in detail, at the end of articles today in the Times, Post and Sun. The part of the deal that led those articles, and led the city’s press release that was used to quickly and easily create those articles, is that there will be “merit pay,” something that may allow Bloomberg to make a political point. The teachers would receive bonuses if they worked in low-performing schools and those schools improved. But that may be a pilot program, which can be terminated after Bloomberg leaves, and is funded only with private donations, whose future is at best uncertain. The real order of significance can be found in on the UFT website and in the Daily News story, where this part of the agreement is given its proper insignificance. Or more significance than it deserves.

Mayoral control of the New York City public schools doesn’t expire until June 2009, but with the state legislature seemingly in the mood to oppose anything Mayor Bloomberg is in favor of, the Mayor has already started a public relations push. I happened to be at home one day last week and saw a commercial on the subject, albeit obliquely on the subject, on daytime television. And in late June Crain’s NY Business reported that in a breakfast for business leaders the Mayor “vowed to fight for renewal of mayoral control of the school system when the law authorizing it expires.” “It's hard for the Legislature not to reauthorize something where parents say, ‘My kids for the first time in memory are getting the kind of education they need to compete in the world,’” the Mayor is quoted as saying. Another publication quoted the Mayor as not wanting to go backward on education. Well, it isn’t hard for the New York State legislature to do anything, regardless of how good or bad it is for the city’s children. They don’t care. They don’t have to. But even if they did, it isn’t clear Mayoral control should simply be extended as it.

The current state policy, which the State Senate seems want to push farther and farther, is to provide more state education funding to school districts that spend the most money, New York City excluded, and then to make New York City pay for it through back door “tax relief” aid for everyone else. No accountability is expected for the added funds. My solution, as I’ve stated in the past, is to have a cap on spending per student at 25 to 33 percent above the national average (adjusted for the cost of living). Not a cap on the increase, keeping existing spending differences in spending as they are forever, as certain cynical, selfish, nasty, dishonest, greedy, immoral, unethical people have often proposed. A cap on the total. Below that cap, no school budget referendums would not be required. Above the cap, one dollar of state education funding would be taken away for each dollar in excess.

I didn’t notice until now, but new data from the New York State Department of Taxation of Finance was released in May for the share of New York State income taxes accounted for by each county. And while for older data I rely on the New York State Statistical Yearbook, which wasn’t published every year, it appears that the 41.3% of income taxes paid by full-time state residents that were paid by New York City residents in 2004 is the most since the early 1970s. The data can be found here. New York City residents accounted for $8.9 billion of the $21.6 billion in state income tax receipts paid by full time residents that year, or 41.3% of the total. Moreover, as New Jersey and Connecticut residents account for $2.8 billion of the $3.8 billion in state income taxes paid by non-residents, I doubt the majority of those non-residents worked in Watertown. Getting back to full-time residents, New York City residents accounted for 40.2% of the returns, 40.7% of the income, and 41.3% of the taxes. The city’s share of the population was somewhat higher, since it has a much higher poverty rate than the rest of the state, and thus presumably more people not filing returns.

As promised, I have attached a spreadsheet with FY 2005 per-child spending by category (instructional wages and salaries, operation and maintenance of plant, etc.) for every school district in the state. In high-cost downstate New York, the figures have been adjusted downward to account for higher wages and costs here – those which received adjustments are identified by an asterisk. The spreadsheet also includes the original data downloaded from the U.S. Census Bureau that I used for the per-capita figures; the census data includes even more detailed categories I chose not to break out. The data, aside from the big city school districts, is sorted by county (in alphabetical order from Albany to Wyoming) followed by school district name. Although my knowledge of the rest of the state is probably greater than the average Brooklyn resident, I have elected to provide the data without comment. While I’m not sure how many people from outside the city read this blog, if you do please look up the data for your school district and let me know what you think of it. Why are things the way they are? Unfortunately, this data came out after the school budget votes this year. But that means this will be the most recent data available when the budgets come up again next year.

For years, pundits inside the city and out have demanded that New York City reduce its high level of wasteful spending outside the classroom, with some asserting that if only New York City’s non-instructional spending were at typical levels it would have plenty of money for teaching. There was perhaps no greater falsehood ever spread in the city’s fiscal debates. Instead, it is the rest of New York State that stands out in its sky-high non-instructional spending relative to the national average, while New York City has always been low. In fiscal 2005, non-instructional spending totaled $3,423 per student in New York City, or $2,554 if the cost of living is adjusted for, well below the national average of $3,400. The Downstate Suburbs (also adjusted for living costs), Upstate New York, and New Jersey (adjusted as well) far exceeded national average at $4,221, $4,350, and $4,449 respectively. The U.S. Census Bureau data on expenditures per pupil may be found in the spreadsheet attached to my previous post here http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/per_student_revenues_and_expenditures_in_fy_2002_and_fy_2005_a_little_good_news_and_lot_of_bad_news_for_n . A more detailed discussion, including a discussion of changes from FY 2002 to FY 2005, follows.

Through the 1990s, New York City’s per student public school revenues and expenditures were below the national average if adjusted for the cost of living using the modest method I prefer (see the end of the prior post). In Fiscal 2002, however, NYC’s spending per student was $10,882 in cost of living-adjusted $2005, above the national average of $10,084. Unfortunately, the city’s public school revenues per student were only $9,435 at the time, well below the national average of $9,879, as the city borrowed with abandon and kept taxes low during former Mayor Giuliani’s second term. With Mayor Bloomberg making education a top priority, by FY2005 an additional breakthrough had occurred as the city’s revenues per student, adjusted for the cost of living, reached $11,564 that year, above the national average of $10,339. That, I suppose is good news. Almost everything else I discovered about changes between FY 2002 and FY 2005, however, is bad news, with much of it based on decisions made before FY 2002, or subsequently by former Governor Pataki and the New York State legislature. Through FY 2005 Mayor Bloomberg’s fiscal imprint was, in reality modest.

In FY 2002, thanks to 2.5% inflation-adjusted decline in the personal income of New York City residents according to the latest estimates from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, New York City’s elementary and secondary public school spending rose to 4.57% of that personal income, within rounding error of the U.S. average of 4.63%. I thought, and not for the first time, that the city’s public school spending might actually exceed the national average as a share of income in some subsequent year. But it was not to be. As in the early 1990s, government budget reductions lagged the reduction in the tax base, but once they kicked in and personal income began to recover, the city’s public school spending fell as a share of personal income. As I showed earlier based on another data source, the city’s share of state education funding (direct and back-door funding under programs like STAR) was also cut. Meanwhile, spending in the rest of the state stayed at sky-high levels relative to personal income. In fiscal 2005, New York City’s elementary and secondary public school spending had fallen to 4.28% of city residents’ personal income, 7.5% below the national average and 33.7% below the average for the rest of New York State.