EdVANTAGE Blog

Yesterday the U.S. Census Bureau released a report on public school finances with the headline, “New York Leads in Per-Pupil Public Education Spending at Nearly $16,000.”  Earlier today I did a short interview with Syracuse public radio and offered some observations on why we’re number 1.

These are the points I made:

1. Some of this should surprise no one — New York is a high labor cost state in general and schools are labor intensive operations.
2. Averages mask significant differences within a state and New York has been cited as having particularly steep differences between poor and affluent districts in school resources.
3. It’s hard and maybe impossible to quantify, but we sense that public schools are more highly regulated in New York than in most other states and that drives up our spending.
4. Special education is one area of especially intensive regulation and a mounting cost concern for school district leaders.
5. New York aims higher than most other states — we consistently rank 1st or 2nd in the quality of our school standards and some of our mandates reflect an aspiration to ensure all types of children an education that meets their needs.
6. We do produce better results than most other states, especially other largest urbanized states.  We also consistently rank at or near the top in AP participation and we are home to some of the nation’s very best public schools, as evidenced by the number of Intel Science Talent Search finalists we produce, for example.
7. Voters approved over 97 percent of school budgets this year, partly reflecting the value they place on schools.  Also, superintendents and boards worked hard to hold down tax and spending increases this, producing proposals with the lowest average tax increase in seven years despite the weakest state aid in six years and an average spending increase 3 percentage points below what it was last year.

I expanded on some of these points in a paper done in 2006.

E.J. McMahon of the conservative Empire Center did a blog post on the Census report which noted, among other things, that New York’s spending on school administration is much less above the national average than for instructional salaries.

Our Executive Director, Tom Rogers, posted a response noting that our share of school spending devoted to administration is actually well below the national average — 4.0 percent vs. 5.5 percent.