The need for smaller classes and more accountability with CFE funds
Governor Spitzer and the New York State Legislature have an extraordinary opportunity but also a profound obligation in the coming year: to try to ensure that the additional funds needed to provide an adequate education in NYC schools are spent transparently and to achieve the classroom conditions necessary for our students to have a real opportunity to succeed.
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Class sizes are too large in NYC schools, and remain so under the city’s plan for the additional funds our schools are slated to receive as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) case.
Class sizes are too large in NYC schools, and remain so under the city’s plan for the additional funds our schools are slated to receive as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) case. •While New Yorkers have attempted to remedy this situation through a ballot initiative, their efforts have been blocked in court, because the Bloomberg administration argues that the city’s educational policies and spending practices are solely under the jurisdiction of the state rather than any local authorities.
While New Yorkers have attempted to remedy this situation through a ballot initiative, their efforts have been blocked in court, because the Bloomberg administration argues that the city’s educational policies and spending practices are solely under the jurisdiction of the state rather than any local authorities.•There is less financial accountability than before in educational spending. The city continues to misuse hundreds of millions of dollars of state class size reduction funds, as well as openly defy any local law or regulation that relates to educational policies or the administration of our schools.
There is less financial accountability than before in educational spending. The city continues to misuse hundreds of millions of dollars of state class size reduction funds, as well as openly defy any local law or regulation that relates to educational policies or the administration of our schools. The following summary explains the crisis of class size and accountability that continues to afflict our schools, and explains why the Legislature should hold hearings in NYC as soon as possible, to hear directly on their constituents about these issues.
The benefits of smaller classes
Reducing class size is one of the few educational reforms shown to improve student achievement and narrow the achievement gap between ethnic and racial groups. In fact, the federal government cites smaller classes as one of only four “evidence-based” strategies that rigorous research has shown to improve learning.
In the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, the Court of Appeals found that class sizes in all grades in the City schools were too large to afford students their constitutional right to an adequate education, and that the “plaintiffs presented measurable proof, credited by the trial court, that New York City schools have excessive class sizes, and that class size affects learning.”
The decision also stated that “plaintiffs' evidence of the advantages of smaller class sizes supports the inference sufficiently to show a meaningful correlation between the large classes in City schools and the outputs” of poor academic achievement and high dropout rates.”
The court concluded: “[T]ens of thousands of students are placed in overcrowded classrooms, taught by unqualified teachers, and provided with inadequate facilities and equipment. The number of children in these straits is large enough to represent a systemic failure.”
In NYC, classes are too large and would remain so under the city’s CFE plan
New York City parents, teachers and advocates agree that class size is the most important unaddressed problem in our school system today.
In a survey of over 500 educational stakeholders, they respond that reducing class size should be the top priority for our schools, outpolling by 40% the next three options combined. In a Newsday poll taken last fall, when city registered voters were asked, “[w]hat is the biggest issue facing the city public school system?” their top concern was class size, followed by lack of funding and a distant third, school safety.
Their concern is justified. Class sizes in New York City public schools remain the largest in the state by far, and among the largest in the nation.
According to a recent audit from the NY State Comptroller’s office, more than 60% of City public school children in grades K-3 were in classes larger than the state goal of twenty during the 2004-5 school year, and more than 25% remained in classes of 25 or above.
New York City middle school classes are even larger, averaging 28 students or more, with little or no reduction in class size over the last seven years. According the latest state data, class sizes in New York City high schools exceed those in the rest of the state by 26%-62.5%, and in some key subjects have actually risen over the last few years. The number of classes containing more than 34 students, most of them in high school, has also steadily increased over the last four years.
As a result of these egregiously large classes, particularly in the middle and upper grades, achievement and graduation rates in these grades lag far behind those in the rest of the state. Test scores for New York City middle and high school students are flat or declining, and in 2005, only 38% of New York City 8th graders scored at grade level in English and 48% in math.
The City’s four year graduation rate is only 43.5%, according to the State Education Department. Using slightly different methods of estimation, both the Manhattan Institute and Education Week have released similar figures, showing New York City with the third lowest graduation rate of any urban school district in the nation.
Not only are class sizes currently much too large in New York City schools, they remain so under the city’s compliance plan. This plan would devote only two percent of the CFE funds towards reducing class size, and would reduce average class size in no grade higher than third.
Instead, the New York City Department of Education plans to spend billions of dollars in ways unsupported by research, by hiring thousands more administrators and specialists, providing them with computers, and housing them outside of school buildings in leased office space.
The need for more accountability in NYC’s spending of educational dollars
Rather than improving accountability, the consensus among education advocates and public officials is that under Mayoral control there has been less accountability and transparency than ever before.
In February of 2005, the City Comptroller released a letter to the Mayor, calling into question widely-publicized claims by DOE officials that their restructuring efforts had led to cost savings of $200 million that had been redirected to the classroom. Instead, the City Comptroller found that the head count of the central administration at Tweed had increased, and that New York City schools had suffered a net loss of over 2,000 teachers in two years, with no improvement in the teacher-student ratio. Comptroller Thompson added that “DOE fiscal reporting practices have become markedly less transparent since the Department's restructuring. …DOE has misapplied certain units of appropriation to report expenditures, commencing with FY 2004, in a way that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to track its use of public funds.
An analysis by the Educational Priorities Panel found that rather than reducing the bureaucracy, DOE had made huge cuts to special education services, and percentage of spending devoted to instruction has steadily declined during the Bloomberg administration.
Large contracts awarded by DOE routinely bypass the City Comptroller’s office. In 2005, DOE distributed $120 million in no-bid contracts, ten times the amount given out before Mayor Bloomberg took office. Moreover, these no-bid contracts were awarded without any form of public review.
For other city agencies, no-bid contracts are rare and public hearings are required, to ensure transparency, lack of favoritism, and cost-effectiveness. But the Mayor and Chancellor have argued that even under Mayoral control, the DOE remains a state agency, and thus solely under the jurisdiction of state law. Under the same rationale, the DOE has refused to abide by any of the environmental regulations required of other city agencies, or any law passed by the City Council regarding educational policy, including the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA), which prohibits the bullying of gay students.
Recently, the federal government accused the city of misspending almost a billion dollars in Medicaid funds, by funneling special education students to unqualified practitioners and by omitting the proper paperwork. Rather than promising to improve these practices, city officials insisted that the findings be withdrawn.
In January 2005, in response to the overriding need for transparency and accountability in the spending of education dollars, over four hundred New York City parents, advocates and elected officials, including the Speaker of the City Council and the Public Advocate, sent a letter to Justice Leland DeGrasse of the State Supreme Court, asking him to require more accountability and financial oversight in the use of the funds awarded our schools as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, including annual audits from the State Comptroller’s office.
NYC’s chronic misuse of the state class size reduction funds
The lack of accountability in the spending of education dollars under Mayoral control has been particularly egregious in the area of class size. Since 1999-2000, the state has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in categorical grants for districts to hire additional teachers to provide smaller classes in grades K-3, under the LADDER program.
For the last five years, NYC has received $89 million annually for this purpose. In 2003, the State Comptroller released an audit showing that as of 2002, New York City had only formed 55% of the additional classes for which it had received funding. Unfortunately, because this audit was unreported at the time, few were aware of its existence, and SED failed to follow up with improved enforcement.
During the 2003-4 school year, an analysis by the NYC Independent Budget Office found that class sizes rose in Kindergarten citywide, for the first time in six years, which was contrary to official data reported in the Mayor’s Management Report.
Moreover, despite falling enrollment, the IBO found that average class sizes for grades K-3 had increased in 15 NYC school districts, while declining in only 14. As a result, only 38% of Kindergarten students were in classes that met the state goal of 20 or less; only 33% of first and second graders, and only 28% of third graders.
Why? The lack of progress in reducing class size, despite falling enrollment and nearly $100 million a year in annual state funds, resulted from a sharp decline in the total number of classroom teachers hired and classes offered in grades K-3. The IBO also observed that
“… the city reported a higher number of new classes formed than IBO found in its analysis of the data.”
The DOE subsequently admitted that Kindergarten class size had indeed risen, and that it had been reporting inaccurate class size data, by including in its class size calculations very small, non-existing classes of long term absent students.
Along with Class Size Matters, then-Speaker of the City Council Gifford Miller, State Senator Schneiderman and City Councilmember Robert Jackson asked the State Comptroller in January of 2005 to audit NYC’s reporting of class size and use of the state class size reduction funds.
The subsequent audit from the State Comptroller’s office, released on March 15, 2006 found that in 2004-5, the NYC Department of Education had formed only twenty additional classes over the baseline year of 1998-99, that is, since the state-funded program began. This means that DOE only created 1.3% of the additional classes claimed in 2004, with each one costing the taxpayer over $4 million.
The audit also found that over the last four years, the number of early grade classes in NYC schools had declined by 876. The worsening compliance on the part of the NYC Department of Education was clearly not a result of lack of space, as there was sufficient room for almost 900 more classes four years earlier, elementary school enrollment had declined significantly over this period, and new seats had been added.
Instead, as the audit concluded, the DoE had used millions of dollars of state funds to pay for teaching positions which had existed before the program began – contrary to law – and the situation had gotten considerably worse over time.
“….we believe that the DoE’s calculations are not consistent with the Law, because DoE’s method substitutes Program funding for local funding that was used previously for early grade classes (and teachers) that existed prior to the Program’s implementation.”
If the DOE had actually created the additional classes that city officials had claimed, class sizes in these grades would have averaged 19.1 students per class, and a majority of students would be in classes of 20 or less. Instead, as stated above, more than 60% of NYC students in K-3 remained in classes of 21 or larger, with 26% in classes of 25 or larger.
In the audit, the State Comptroller made numerous recommendations for improved performance and implementation on the part of the city. Nevertheless, in its response to the audit, submitted the day of the Mayoral election, DOE officials wrote that they refused to adopt any of these suggestions, claiming that their compliance was sufficient.
Lack of state action so far
In response to requests from NYC education advocates and parents, the State Education Department finally released their first report on the implementation of the class size program in the spring of 2006 – even though this report had been required annually by law since 2001. The report, which was three pages with a cover sheet, concluded that the state program had been “successfully implemented in keeping with the intent of the authorizing legislation,” without mentioning either of the two audits from the State Comptroller’s office which had found otherwise.
Subsequently, a letter was sent to the Board of Regents and Commissioner Mills by the executive directors of Class Size Matters, the Educational Priorities Panel, the Children's Defense Fund-New York, and the President of the United Federation of Teachers, asking the state to require a phased-in class size reduction plan for New York City, with the goal of full statutory compliance in two years. In response, Cynthia Gallagher, director of SED’s Office of Early Education, wrote back that the implementation of the class size reduction program has been “complex”, the original requirements of the law are “difficult to implement”, and the Department has worked “delinquently [sic] ” with the Legislature to loosen the regulations.
Faced with the clear indication of DOE’s misuse of hundreds of millions in state funds, resulting directly in diminished learning opportunities for our children, it appears that the State Education Department continues to look for reasons to excuse NYC’s poor performance – in essence, allowing them to create not even one additional class with $89 million of state funds, and face absolutely no consequences.
Unfortunately, the new audit legislation passed last year by the State Legislature also appears to exempt NYC from many of its requirements. While it mandates that school board members in other districts must be trained concerning their financial oversight responsibilities, establishes an internal audit function within each school district, and creates audit committees, it exempts cities with populations of more than 125,000 from many of these provisions, and specifically exempts New York City from having to form an internal audit committee as long as the Chancellor certifies to the State Commissioner that the district has in place an existing process that meets these requirements.
The need for more reliable data
Another sign of the need for more transparency and accountability regards key educational indicators as reported by the DOE. For example, class size data released in the Mayor’s Management Report and elsewhere have been notoriously unreliable. In 2002-3, the State Education Department officials rejected all the class size data received from New York City, as it was full of errors to be unusable. Every year since then, the class size averages the State reports for City schools differ significantly from the City’s own official figures.
In 2004, the Independent Budget Office also calculated different averages, showing that class sizes had risen in kindergarten for the first time in six years, rather than declined, as the DOE had claimed. The Deputy Chancellor eventually admitted that the DOE had long reported inaccurate class size figures, by including in their calculations small phantom classes of long-term absent students.
The differences in reported average high school class sizes between the State and the City remain especially large. For example, while the City claimed 26.4 for average high school classes in 2004-5, the State data shows no high school subject where average class sizes in New York City was smaller than 28.4, with most subjects at 29-30 per class on average.
Also, according to the State, average class sizes in some crucial subjects have risen over the last few years. Math Course 1, which is typically taken in 9th grade to prepare students for the Regents, has grown from 26.1 students per class in 2001 to 32.5 students on average in 2004.
Other key educational indicators as reported by the City are also unreliable. As already mentioned, while the City claims that the four year graduation rate for the class of 2005 at 58%, the State concluded that for this same cohort of students, only 43.5% graduated on time. The Department’s methodology for calculating this rate would not be deemed acceptable by the state or federal government, nor any independent agency, as students who obtain GEDs are counted as regular high school graduates, and almost 6,000 special education students and more than 16,000 discharged students are excluded from their calculations.
Indeed, the number of New York City high school students who have been discharged and thus uncounted in the official estimates has risen sharply over the last five years, which makes the city’s claim of improving graduation rates highly suspect.
The marginalization of parents and other stakeholders
As has been widely reported, parents and other stakeholders feel increasingly marginalized and disenfranchised under this administration. Many members of the Community Education Councils have reported that they have neither the tools nor the authority to provide substantive input to district policies. An online poll conducted by the Fordham Center for Schools and Communities found that only 4% of New York City parents who were surveyed agreed with the Mayor’s current priorities for our schools.
Last spring, the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council (CPAC), which represents the elected leadership of every school PTA throughout the city, decided to boycott the DOE-sponsored Lobby Day in Albany for the first time, because of substantive disagreements and a continued lack of consultation. The following excerpt is from the testimony of Tim Johnson, Chair of CPAC, before the New York City Council in May 2006:
Parent involvement has suffered greatly under this administration. The parent voice has been effectively silenced. Parents have been systematically disenfranchised. This Chancellor views parents as the enemy, rather than as partners in our public-school system. This Chancellor believes that he can unilaterally remake our school system while alienating parents at every turn.
The Klein “reforms” are being implemented without any meaningful participation from parents – the majority stakeholders in our school system. Controversial policies that run the gamut from sea changes in curriculum to cell-phone bans are imposed without any input from parent organizations. When parents bring their concerns to the Chancellor, we are treated with contempt.
The ballot initiative of New Yorkers for Smaller Classes
In 2003, a coalition of 27 parent groups, unions, advocacy and faith-based organizations called New Yorkers for Smaller Classes was formed, to address the continuing crisis of large class sizes in our public schools. In the spring of 2004, the coalition gathered more than 100,000 signatures of New Yorkers, to would put a city charter amendment on the ballot, so that voters could decide if at least 25% of the CFE funds should be invested in reducing class size to levels that exist in the rest of the state.
The Mayor has blocked this proposed amendment from appearing on the ballot, claiming that the DOE remains solely under the jurisdiction of the state, even under Mayoral control. He and the Chancellor continue to maintain that no local law passed by the City Council or city charter provision can have any authority over their educational policies or budgeting. In April, Justice Lewis Stone of the State Supreme Court ruled in favor of the city’s argument, and this decision has now been appealed. Nevertheless, in its brief, the city conceded that the State has the ultimate authority to legislate on the issue of class size in New York City, as well as to appropriate funds specifically to that end.
These legal developments, as well as the anticipated settlement in the CFE case, put these issues squarely into the lap of the next Governor and the State Legislature to resolve. We ask that our legislators hold hearings in New York City as soon as possible, to hear from their constituents about how the crisis in credibility, accountability and class size in our schools should be addressed.
Prepared by Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters, November 2006.
