In recent years, New York, like most other states, has adopted a set of challenging educational standards that are geared to preparing all students to be capable citizens and to compete in the global marketplace. The state has also implemented extensive Regents testing programs to measure student progress toward meeting the standards. These assessments are used to hold school districts, superintendents, principals, and students accountable for meeting specific outcome goals and to apply a range of sanctions if they do not. The Court of Appeals' decision in "CFE v. State of New York" makes clear that all students cannot realistically be expected to obtain a sound basic education in accordance with state graduation standards unless sufficient resources have been provided to all schools. A comprehensive accountability system that meets the constitutional requirements articulated by the Court of Appeals must include not only accurate outcome measures and decisive consequences but also assurances of adequate funding and methods for fairly distributing and effectively using appropriate resources to meet student needs. This report proposes a new constitutional accountability for the State of New York consisting of five basic components, all of which are necessary and cannot effectively be implemented separately: (1) Adequate Systemic Funding at annual levels that guarantee minimum essential resources; (2) Comprehensive Planning and Distribution of Sufficient Resource to Each School that will demonstrate specifically how district funds will be used in defined priority areas to meet the goals of providing all students with the opportunity for a sound basic education and closing existing achievement gaps; (3) Effective Use of Resource by accounting for local conditions and students needs, and by focusing on building school-based instructional capacity with significant input from teachers, parents, and the entire school community; (4) Proper Assessment of Outcomes by improving the current Regents' system by undertaking an independent review of the validity and reliability of all Regents examinations and encouraging districts and schools to utilize portfolios in a supplementary manner to assess organizational, communication, social responsibility, and other civic participation skills; and (5) Appropriate Consequences for Poor Performance by prompt application of decisive sanctions at all levels of responsibility to ensure availability of adequate resources and eliminate fiscal abuse and professional incompetence. Listings of the Sound Basic Education Task Force Members and Expert Consultants are appended. (Contains 42 footnotes, 1 figure, and 4 tables.) [For parts I and II of this report, see ED503729 and ED503731.]