Education Finance Reform in New York: Calculating the Cost of a 'Sound Basic Education' in New York City

In June 2003 the New York State Court of Appeals altered the education-finance landscape with its ruling in Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. New York. This ruling called for “[r]eforms to the current system of financing school funding” designed to ensure “that every school in New York City would have the resources necessary for providing the opportunity for a sound basic education.” This ruling addressed a wide range of issues, but also declared that “the funding level necessary to provide City students with the opportunity for a sound basic education is an ascertainable starting point.” This policy brief addresses the question: How can this funding level be determined? Any calculation of the cost of a “sound basic education” must begin with a definition of this term, that is, with a decision about the educational standard every district is supposed to reach. This is a decision to be made by lawmakers, with input from the Court of Appeals. We begin with an overview of the issues that arise in making this decision, and then turn to the main concern of this policy brief, namely, how to calculate the cost of a sound basic education once it has been defined by lawmakers.

Expensive Children in Poor Families: Out-of-Pocket Expenditures for the Care of Disabled and Chronically Ill Children and Welfare Reform

This study explores one aspect of the costs experienced by low-income families with one or more special needs children: direct, out-of-pocket expenses for items related to the child’s disability, such as special foods, transportation to medical clinics, or medical costs not covered by insurance. We find that almost half (46 percent) of a sample of California AFDC families with special needs children experienced some special expenses in the preceding month. About 20 percent of these low-income families experienced total costs exceeding $100. Families with severely disabled children were more likely to experience costs and tended to experience higher costs. While no more likely to experience special expenses, families of children with mental impairments tended to have higher costs than those with physical impairments. The primary impact of special expenses was to increase the percentage of families in deep poverty: those at or below 75 percent of poverty-level income. Taken as a group, however, families with special needs children appeared no more poor than other families. Much of this parity may be due to the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. Among families with severely disabled children, only 32 percent of those receiving SSI lived at or below poverty, while three quarters of those without SSI lived at or below poverty. Our findings suggest that out-of-pocket expenses are a substantial burden for some low-income families with special needs children and that the Supplemental Security Income program does a good job of alleviating these extraordinary outlays

The Cost of Caring: Childhood Disability and Poor Families

Children in poor families are at heightened risk for disabilities and chronic health problems, and care for these children can impose substantial costs on families and public programs. Although the prevalence and costs of disabilities among poor children have important policy implications, they have been largely overlooked in research on poverty and welfare and on the costs of childhood disabilities. This paper analyzes the prevalence of childhood disabilities and chronic illness among welfare recipient families in California and the probability families caring for these children experience higher out-of-pocket costs and material hardship then do other similar families

Work, Welfare, and the Burden of Disability: Caring for Special Needs of Children in Poor Families

This paper addresses issues which arise at the juncture of welfare and disability policies. Using preliminary data from a recent survey of current and recent AFDC recipients in California, we find that disabilities and chronic health problems affect the mothers or children in 43 percent of all households in the AFDC system. The presence of one or more children with disabilities or chronic illnesses is found to have an impact on the economic well-being of families, with increased levels of direct hardship reported by families caring for one or more severely impaired children. Potential causes of higher levels of hardship are examined by considering the impact of direct expenses associated with the care of the child(ren) and reductions in the mother’s probability of paid employment. SSI receipt is found to have a modest antipoverty effect for families with special needs children, reducing the prevalence of poverty and extreme poverty for families even after the additional direct costs of caring for these children are considered

Education finance equity: Judicial treatment of key issues and impact of that treatment on reform

American reformers have long been concerned by substantial differences in the money and resources available to different school districts. Troubled particularly by the education provided to students from poor and minority families, reformers have gone to court to challenge school finance disparities in many states and have won in close to half. In this dissertation, I undertook a systematic, structured qualitative analysis of state supreme court opinions concerning education finance reform from 1971 to 1996. The systematic nature of the study resulted in several key findings. First, as in other, less-structured studies, I found that judges were more likely to interpret state constitutions as requiring the state school system to guarantee all students access to sufficient resources to acquire an adequate education rather as requiring equality of funding or educational resources across school districts. I also found, however, that a court\u27s acceptance of an adequacy standard often played a conservative role in school finance reform litigation. While courts were more likely to accept an adequacy standard, they were also more likely to find it met and to uphold the existing school funding system. In contrast, the few courts imposing an equality standard were much less likely to find it met and, therefore, were more likely to require reform. Second, few courts have explicitly addressed whether states must provide additional funding to districts with high concentrations of at-risk students. Those addressing this issue have split. In addition, using New York state data, I simulated the likely impact of reforms implemented in response to different court resolutions of two key issues: whether the constitution imposes a high or low minimum adequacy standard and whether the state is required to provide additional funding for districts with high proportions of at-risk students. I found that troubled, big city districts benefitted from reforms requiring a high minimum adequacy standard, with or without adjustment for concentrations of at-risk students. They also benefitted from a low minimum adequacy standard, but only if it required adjustment for at-risk students

Privatization of prisons: Impact on prison conditions

Local property tax revolts in California(1978) and in Oregon(1990,1997) altered to design of the state and local finance systems. Washington has also faced anti-tax pressures, dramatic tax cuts, though they have been limited by the courts. This paper considers the long term consequences of these changes for four specific budget areas: K-12 education; higher education, transportation; and fish and game over the period of 1978-1990 and 1990-2002. Specifically the paper examines how pressure to shift state general funds to K-12 funding alters the revenue structures of these programs. Three focal topics are: 1) the extent of cost-shifting to alternate revenue sources(such as tuition or other fees) that occurs following major tax cuts, 2) whether programs relying primarily on dedicated revenue sources (such as transportation/fuel taxes and fees) are affected by general fund pressures, and 3) whether smaller programs are protected when across the board cuts threatened them with extinction