September 6, 2024
The Center for Educational Equity and the American Institutes for Research are launching a project to advance the development of a constitutional school funding formula for New York State to replace the current 18-year old Foundation Aid formula, which is outdated and unconstitutional. Our Adequate, Constitutional, Equitable (ACE) School Funding Project will conduct an independent study to begin a process to develop a new formula that will fulfill the state’s constitutional obligation to provide our students sufficient resources each year to truly meet their educational needs.
For the past two years, the Center for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University, the New York State Education Department, and most major educational advocacy and policy organizations in New York have agreed that the current Foundation Aid formula does not meet current educational needs and that a new formula must be developed. The current formula, which determines 70% of all state aid to P-12 education, was developed in 2006 and is egregiously out of date.
Since the formula was adopted in 2007, there have been substantial changes in educational needs and educational practices that affect school funding needs. These include demographic shifts, enrollment changes, new policy initiatives like universal pre-K, significant increases in the numbers of migrant students and students in temporary housing, substantial post-pandemic learning loss, and increased demand for mental health services.
However, Governor Hochul has stymied all attempts to initiate a process to develop a new formula. Instead of tackling the state’s school funding problems comprehensively, the governor has asked the Rockefeller Institute, a part of the state university system, to recommend limited modifications to the current formula for consideration in next year’s state aid budget — so long as those changes are “fiscally sustainable for the state.” The governor’s stance is not only a disservice to New York State’s students, but it is also in violation of Article XI of the New York State Constitution, which requires the state to fund its public schools adequately and equitably.
For these reasons, the Center for Educational Equity is joining forces with the American Institutes for Research (AIR), a national firm with extensive experience analyzing education costs and developing state education aid formulas, to initiate the Adequate, Constitutional, Equitable (ACE) School Funding Project to advance the development of a new school funding formula for New York State.
Developing a new formula will require more time than is available between now and April 2025, when the next school aid budget must be adopted. Therefore, working with data produced by AIR, the Center will also develop proposals for immediately improving the current formula. We will support the Rockefeller Institute’s proposals when we agree they are in students’ interests and critique those the data do not support. We will also add additional proposals of our own to supplement the Rockefeller Institute's recommendations.
In addition, we will go beyond the Rockefeller Institute’s limited mandate and lay the groundwork for developing a comprehensive new school funding formula for adoption in the April 2026 budget. In the coming months, we will also continue our efforts to convince the governor and the legislature to take responsibility for continuing and completing the process of developing a new formula.
The Court of Appeals, New York State’s highest court, made clear in its 2003 decision in Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York that the state must regularly undertake a systemic analysis, based on student need, of the actual cost of providing all students the opportunity for a sound basic education and then develop an equitable formula for providing all schools the resources they need to provide their students that opportunity. The state has failed to do so for many years. We aim to induce the state and the governor to comply with their constitutional obligation to analyze the schools’ current financial needs and develop an equitable way to meet them.
We will provide more information about this new initiative and answer questions from the interested public at a school funding Zoom town hall meeting that will take place on Thursday, September 19th at 4 pm. If you are interested in attending, please register here. Those registering will be provided a Zoom link for the event.
This project is being funded by generous support from Robin Hood Foundation and Schott Foundation, and individual donors. Support our work.
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