How Modern School Finance/Education Policy Works: Lessons from New York « School Finance 101

How Modern School Finance/Education Policy Works: Lessons from New York « School Finance 101:

How Modern School Finance/Education Policy Works: Lessons from New York

by schoolfinance101

I’ll admit that the more I do this stuff, the more I write about today’s education policy environment and especially the environment around school funding, I do get more cynical. And few states have done more to encourage my cynicism than New York, of late. But I suspect that the tales from the trenches in many other states might be quite similar. So let me use New York as a prototype of the twists and turns and warped logic of modern state education policy.  New York education policy has followed a four step process:

Step 1: Slither out from court order by rigging low-ball foundation aid formula

As I noted on another recent post, several years back the New York Court  of Appeals ordered that the state legislature provide sufficient funding (specifically to New York City) to achieve a “sound basic education” which was ultimately equated with a “meaningful high school education.”  The city and governor’s office presented to the court alternative estimates of what that would cost. The state (governor/legislature/regents), as might be