New York City's Contract for Excellence: Closing the Funding Gap or a Funding Shell Game?

Abstract

This report is entitled New York City's Contract for Excellence: Closing the Funding Gap or a Funding Shell Game? The answer to the question posed by the title of the report is "both." The state's Contracts for Excellence funds are promoting educational equity and closing the funding gap between the highest-poverty and lowest-poverty schools. However, the City's "shell game" is undermining this important progress through supplanting. To remedy the findings of this report it is incumbent on the state Commissioner of Education to make a determination as to whether supplanting of Contract for Excellence funds occurred and to order a restoration of these funds by New York City. Otherwise the additional funding secured as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity is being undermined and student progress cannot be expected to result