The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) entitles students with disabilities to a free appropriate public education. Students with disabilities often require additional support to enable them to achieve academic and functional goals relative to their nondisabled peers. These legally protected supports and services all add up…

Instead of asking whether money matters, this paper questions whose money matters in public education. Previous literature on education funding uses an aggregate expenditure per pupil to measure the relationship between education funding and academic performance. Federalism creates mainly three levels of funding sources: federal, state, and local…

With the economic halt precipitated by the COVID-19 virus, states are starting to prepare for and beginning to address the budgetary squeeze that is sure to come absent of massive federal stimulus dollars. At the end of March, New York State was the first state to come out with a post-COVID-19 state budget (the Legislative Budget). In early April,…

There is a widening college access gap in the United States. The ever-rising cost of higher education, coupled with diminished government financial support and growing income inequality, have put college out of reach for many at a critical juncture when postsecondary education is essential for enhancing career prospects. The situation has been…

With nearly 10 percent of U.S. elementary and secondary students less than fully fluent in English, many school districts are struggling to develop the capacity to meet the needs of these nearly 5 million children from immigrant and refugee backgrounds. More than two-thirds of these students live in the traditional immigrant-destination states of…

In the education world, the existence of funding inequities has long been a known fact, but the sources of these inequities have not always been obvious. Typically, local property tax variation has been blamed as the sole, or at least primary, cause of inequalities and called for greater state funding as the solution. In practice, however, it is…

Raising academic standards and eliminating achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students are America's prime national educational goals. Current federal and state policies, however, largely ignore the fact that the childhood poverty rate in the United States is 21%, the highest in the industrialized world, and that poverty…

A revision of a report introduced as evidence in the school finance case Levittown v. Nyquist, this report analyzes the way educational revenues are raised and distributed in New York State and demonstrates the impact of these methods on educational services. The study was based on 1974-75 official New York State data and utilized analytic…

In 1996-97, forty percent of all students in New York state public schools attend schools in one of the nine high minority districts in which minority students constituted eighty percent or more of total enrollment. This report uses the downstate metropolitan region to analyze the effect of state aid policies on high minority school districts and…

Uneven access to taxable real property wealth currently produces wide disparities in per pupil expenditures among New York state school districts. The state's operating aid formula does not compensate for the inequities in low wealth districts having an operating expense level of more than $1,500 per pupil. In the last decade several proposals…

Although New York State now has several educational expenditure controls, more are needed. Currently, the city districts have constitutional tax limitations, while in the independent districts the voters exercise control over expenditures. Nevertheless, the wide differences among school districts of unequal wealth are growing. There are two basic…

Among recently emerged educational policy structures in New York State, only the New York State United Teachers is likely to become a permanent new force, and its influence over general educational policies is expected to be weak. Within the current political-educational policy structure, prospects are dim for solutions to such complex issues as…

In discharging its constitutional responsibility for maintaining and supporting free public schools, the state financially aids local school districts to insure that lack of wealth is not an obstacle to providing at least a mimimum educational program. State aid to education in New York State is dependent on two factors: the full value of real…

Contents of these hearings include: a statement prepared for the Senate Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity, submitted by the National Committee for Support of the Public Schools; "Future Direction for School Financing, a Response to Demands for Fiscal Equity in American Education," a monograph prepared by the National…

Since the establishment of school districts in 1812, a number of inequalities in public school finance have emerged in New York State. These inequalities result from decentralization within the system as a whole, and large-scale centralization of New York City schools. In a decentralized system, where districts have taxing power, rich districts…