New York spends more than any other state on public education, pays teachers more generously than most other states, and has more students classified with a disability than almost any other state. After inflation, education spending has increased by 82 percent since 1993. Yet enrollment in public schools has fallen by 9 percent, and eighth-graders now read at a lower level than they did ten years ago. What’s going wrong?
Dollars don’t matter if you aren’t spending them wisely. As my colleagues and I explain in a new Manhattan Institute brief, New York public education is falling behind because the state has ignored chances to discover what educational practices really work, use that evidence to improve student outcomes, and make its leadership accountable for results.
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Start with measurement problems. While the state gathers troves of data, many of its most important programs are poorly measured or poorly evaluated.
For example, New York knows very little about its two fastest-growing programs: special education and school-based mental-health services. In New York, 21 percent of public school students are classified as having a disability, compared with the national average of 15 percent. The state has also opened more than 1,000 school-based mental-health clinics and hired counselors at a rate few other states can match. But it does not track if students are getting the services they need, if the programs are effective, or even if parents agreed to them.
New York faces a similar issue with tracking individual students. Forty-four states now screen children from kindergarten through third grade to identify those performing below grade level before the first state test in third grade. While New York does require schools to provide help for struggling students up to fourth grade, it does not require them to keep tabs on who those students are or follow their progress. Third-grade testing provides the first official indicator that a child cannot read at grade level. By then the gap is often too wide to close.
The New York State Board of Regents could address this tracking problem by requiring universal screening, as most states now do. Though New York has passed its first science-of-reading initiative, it has not added screening to improve reading.
A similar problem exists with teacher-preparation programs. The state has some of the most demanding teacher-certification requirements in the country. It is one of the few states that requires a master’s degree and mandates 100 hours of professional development every five years.
But all this effort goes for naught if the training teachers get is poor quality. For example, New York does not check whether its teacher-education programs include the kind of reading instruction that evidence shows is most effective. In fact, half of New York teacher-education programs fail to meet requirements for teaching children to read.
New York should join the Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact, which lets fully licensed teachers move between member states without having to meet extra requirements. Currently, the state requires teachers licensed in other parts of the country to pass its own exams and attend its own workshops before they can work in classrooms here. It should also require its own teacher programs to demonstrate that they are following the latest research on reading and math instruction.
New York is also getting rid of its one statewide graduation requirement, the Regents exams. The new Portrait of a Graduate requirements will allow students to demonstrate mastery through coursework, projects, internships, work-based learning, community service, or other local options instead of taking a test. The state will still offer Regents’ exams, but the tests will not be required to graduate.
The problem is that the state has not created a standard to make these alternatives comparable. Right now, there is no statewide rubric, no coordination across districts, and no outside review. A diploma will mean whatever the issuing district decides.
Not all of New York’s problems are about measurement. Sometimes the state has the evidence in hand but chooses to ignore it.
For example, we have strong evidence that New York’s charter schools encourage student achievement. Yet a legislative cap limits charter school growth in New York, even where demand exceeds available spots.
Charters are especially important to the state’s minority families: statewide, 46 percent of charter students are black, while 41 percent are Hispanic; the comparable figures for district school students are 13 percent black and 30 percent Hispanic. Black and Hispanic students also perform better in charter schools. Though they make up less than a tenth of all schools statewide, charters account for 39 percent of the schools where low-income students read at grade level. Lawmakers should raise, or better yet remove, the charter cap.
While Albany can make that fix, other changes depend on the Board of Regents. Yet the Board is not meaningfully accountable to New York State parents.
The legislature elects the 17 Regents, who each serve five-year terms. The Regents, in turn, pick the education commissioner. The governor, the only statewide official elected by the voters, has no role in either process. This makes New York one of only nine states where the governor does not have a say in choosing education leaders or ensuring student outcomes. That’s why the Board keeps making unpopular changes or failing to make popular ones.
The legislature should give the governor an official role in choosing Regents and require the Board to share all evidence supporting its decisions. These changes would make it clear who is accountable for student outcomes.
New York overspends on education, fails to measure results, and leaves its leaders unaccountable for mediocre student outcomes. It can choose to do otherwise—and should.