Appendix

Discussion Papers to Develop the Regents 2000-01 Proposal on State Aid to School Districts

School Finance for High Performance—Selected Articles

Data Sources

Definition of Terms

Categories of School Districts Used for Figures 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 13, 16, 17, 19, 20 and 21

Discussion Papers to Develop the Regents
2000-01 Proposal on State Aid to School Districts

April 1999:

Strategies for State Aid—Short and Long-term

Overview of State Aid History—New York and the Nation

June 1999:

Student Achievement, Pupil Need and State Aid

July 1999:

Linking Funding and Successful Strategies for High Student Achievement. A Report on Funding Equity and Adequacy, Other State Efforts to Provide Adequate Funding and Linking Funding and Successful Strategies to Raise Student Achievement

Selected Articles on School Finance to Support High Learning Standards

September 1999:

Moving Towards Adequacy: Recognizing High Cost Factors in the Financing of Public Education

The Educational Finance Research Consortium Begins Three Condition Studies

Article from the research literature: Peternick, L., Smerdon, B.A., Fowler, Jr., W. and Monk, D.H. Using Cost and Need Adjustments to Improve the Measurement of School Finance Equity. Developments in School Finance, 1997, 151-168.

Comparison of Legislative Action for 1998-99 with the Re-gents Proposal, Governor’s Proposal and Legislative Action on State Aid to School Districts for School Year 1999-00

October 1999:

School District Local Tax Effort

State Aid Recommendations to Build the Capacity of Teachers to Meet High Learning Standards

Ensuring School Success Through Extra Time and Help

November 1999:

Supporting School Success Draft Proposal on State Aid to School Districts for School Year 2000-01, Discussion Paper for the Regents Subcommittee on State Aid, November 1999 School Finance for High Performance.

December 1999:

Final Approval of Regents Proposal on State Aid to School Districts for School Year 2000-01 and Beyond. Report to New York State Board of Regents, December 14, 1999 (BR(A)7)

Addendum to BR(A)7. Report to New York State Board of Regents, December 17, 1999.

School Finance for High Performance
Selected Articles

Clune, W. H. Educational Adequacy: A Theory and Its Remedies. University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 1995, No. 3, pp. 481-491.

Clune, W.H. The Shift From Equity to Adequacy in School Finance. June 1993. Also published in Vol. 8 Educational Policy No. 376, 1994.

Duncombe, W. and J. Yinger. Performance Standards and Educational Cost Indexes: You Can’t Have One Without the Other. Prepared for a conference sponsored by the Committee on Education Finance, National Research Council, Irvine, California, January 30-31, 1998.

Guthrie, J. W. and R. Rothstein. Enabling "Adequacy" to Achieve Reality: Translating Adequacy into State School Finance Distribution Arrangements. In Equity and Adequacy in Education Finance, edited by H.F. Ladd, R. Chalk and J.S. Hansen. Washington, D.C. 1999, National Academy Press, 1999.

Haycock, K. Good Teaching Matters…A Lot: How Well-Qualified Teachers Can Close the Gap. The Education Trust, Vol.3, Issue 2, Summer 1998.

Hickrod, G.A. and F. C. Genge. The "Quadriform" and the Curriculum: An Approach to Economic Efficiency in the Public Schools. Journal of Education Finance, 20, Fall 1994, pp.209-221.

Levin, H. Economics of school reform for at-risk students. In E.A. Hanushek and D.W. Jorgenson (Eds.), Improving America’s Schools: The role of incentives (pp.225-240). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1996.

Levin, H. Raising school productivity: An X-efficiency approach. Economics of Education Review, 16(3), 303-311, 1997.

Madden, N.A., R.E. Slavin, N.L. Karweit, L.J. Dolan and B.A. Wasik. Success for All Longitudinal Effects of a Restructuring Program for Inner City Elementary Schools . American Educational Research Journal, Spring 1993, V. 30, No. 1, pp. 123-148.

K.H. Miles. Freeing Resources for improving Schools: A Case Study of Teacher Allocation in Boston Public Schools. Educational Evalutation and Policy Analysis, 1995, V.17, No.4, pp.476-493.

Odden, A. "Creating School Finance Policies That Facilitate New Goals," CPRE Policy Briefs, September, 1998.

Odden, A. Improving State School Finance Systems: New Realities Create Need to Re-Engineer School Finance Structures. CPRE Occasional Paper Series OP-04. Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 1999.

Odden, A. and C. Busch. Reallocating Education Dollars to Improve Results. Financing Schools for High Performance—Strategies for Improving the Use of Educational Resources. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999, pp.163-186.

Peternick, L. B. A. Smerdon, W. Fowler, Jr. and D. H. Monk. Using Cost and Need Adjustments to Improve the Measurement of School Finance Equity. Developments in School Finance, 1997, 151-168.

Rothstein, R. and J.R. Smith. Adjusting Oregon Education Expenditures for Regional Cost Differences: A Feasibility Study. Submitted by Management Analysis and Planning Associates, L.L.C. Submitted to Confederation of Oregon School Administrators, May 30, 1997.

R. E. Slavin. How Can Funding Equity Ensure Enhanced Achievement? Journal of Education Finance, Spring 1999, Vol. 24, pp. 519-528.

United States Department of Labor. Interarea Comparisons of Compensation and Prices. Report on The American Workforce, 1997.

B.A. Wasik and R.E. Slavin. Preventing early reading failure with one-to-one tutoring: A review of five programs. Reading Research Quarterly, 1993, v. 28, pp. 179-200.

Data Sources

New York State Education Department (1999). Annual Report of the Regents to the Governor and the Legislature on the Educational Status of the State’s Schools. Albany, New York.

New York State Education Department (1999). State Aid Database, February 1999.

New York State Education Department (1998). School Facilities Database.

New York City Board of Education. School facilities data, 1998.

New York State Education Department (1999). State Aid to Schools: A Primer.

Definition of Terms

District wealth: Also known as fiscal capacity. Measures of district wealth are used in many State Aid formulas and can represent:

Income and property wealth combined, known as the Combined Wealth Ratio (CWR)
Property wealth
Income wealth

These are measures of the district’s ability to raise revenues locally.

Student need is referred to in many NYSED materials. This generally refers to the following:

Need/Resource Capacity. This is each district’s percent of students with extra-ordinary needs in relation to its ability to raise revenues locally.

For the purposes of State Aid, students with extraordinary needs include students in poverty (as measured by student eligibility for K-6 free and reduced price lunch programs), limited English proficient students and students living in geographically sparse areas of the State.

For the purposes of State Aid, high need school districts are districts with high concentrations of students with extraordinary needs and low fiscal capacity, as measured by high Need/Resource Capacity.

Categories of School Districts Used
for Figures 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 13, 16, 17, 19, 20 and 21

The need/resource capacity index was used to categorize school districts in this report. This is, a measure of a district's ability to meet the needs of its students with local resources, and is measured by the ratio of the estimated poverty percentage⁽¹⁾ (expressed in standard score form) to the Combined Wealth Ratio (2) (expressed in standard score form). A district with both estimated poverty and Combined Wealth Ratio equal to the State average would have a need/resource capacity index of 1.0. Need/Resource Capacity (N/RC) Categories are determined from this index using the definitions in the table below.

Number of School Districts	Number of Students	Need/Resource Capacity Category	Definition
High N/RC Districts
1	1,057,491	New York City	New York City
4	128,333	Large City Districts	Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Yonkers
38	194,741	Urban-Suburban	All districts at or above the 70th percentile (1.181) who meet one of the following conditions: 1) more than 100 students per square mile or 2) have an enrollment of 2,500 or greater and more than 50 students per square mile.
163	194,577	Rural	All districts at or above the 70th percentile (1.181) who meet one of two conditions: 1) fewer than 50 students per square mile or 2) fewer than 100 students per square mile and an enrollment of less than 2,500.
366	877,199	Average N/RC Districts	All districts between the 20th (0.785) and 70th (1.181) percentile on the index.
133	356,243	Low N/RC Districts	All districts below the 20th percentile (0.785) on the index.

Source: New York State Education Department (1999). Annual Report of the Regents to the Governor and the Legislature on the Educational Status of the State’s Schools. Albany, New York, Table 3.1, pages 70 and 74.

(1) Estimated Poverty Percentage: A weighted average of the 1991 kindergarten through grade 6 percent free/reduced price lunch percentage and the 1990 Census poverty percentage. (An average was used to mitigate measurement errors in each measure.) The result is a percentage that more closely approximates the percentage of children eligible for free- or reduced-price lunches than the percentage below the federally established poverty line.

(2) Combined Wealth Ratio: The ratio of district wealth per pupil to State average wealth per pupil, used in the 1994-95 Governor's proposal.

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