The Albany Times Union ran an article on 2\24\98 that reflects the sentiments of far too many people within our education establishment. The title of the piece was "Demand Equity in School Opportunity" and the author was Michael A Rebell. The theme of the piece was outlined with these two sentences: "New York's system for funding it's schools is a scandal", and "...the quality of education a student receives largely depends on where he or she was born." While to many people with vision, this may sound like a call for school choice, it was not part of Mr. Rebell's plan.

The false premise of his argument is a common one espoused previously by many liberal Democrats including state comptroller H. Carl McCall. That being that poor performing school districts need more money in order to compete.

He begins by stating the spending levels of "poor" and "wealthy" districts to be $6000 and $17000 respectively. These figures are grossly inaccurate. According to "The State of Learning" published by the New York State Education Dept, the counties in which school districts spend the least, spend over $7000 per pupil. There are a few exceptional cases which we will exclude from the list of the state's most expensive school districts. Those being, Kiryas Joel at $59,647, Fire Island at $29,877 and Fishers Island at $23,460 per pupil per year. Aside from those, the most expensive of the state's public schools begins with Bridgehampton at $39,343 per pupil per year, Newcomb at $32,882 and Pocantico Hills at $28,839. Of the state's 700+ school districts, 29 spend more than $15,000 per pupil per year, and 231 spend more than $10,000.

Contrary to Mr. Rebell's claim, there is no correlation between these extremely high spending levels and the "combined wealth ratio" of the district. For example, the Albany County district with the lowest combined wealth ratio is Cohoes at 0.602, which spends $9,087 per pupil, while North Colonie with a higher combined wealth ratio of 1.341, spends only $7,801. The Albany city school district has a combined wealth ratio similar to that of North Colonie at 1.262 yet spends more than any other district in the county, $11,085 per pupil.

Moreover, there is no correlation between spending levels and student performance as we can see using Mr. Rebell's numbers: "...only 40 percent of graduates in Albany [$11,085] and 38 percent of graduates in Cohoes [$9,087] earned Regents diplomas." Meanwhile North Colonie [$7,801] graduated 71 percent of it's students with Regents diplomas. If we were to compare per pupil spending on a broader scale we would see lower spending levels result in better student performance. This can be said of private schools, schools in other states, and in other industrialized nations.

Theories abound to explain this phenomenon but the one that seems the most plausible suggests that districts that perform poorly do so because of malfeasance in their administration. These poor performing administrators pass the buck by blaming their incompetence on inadequate funding, while simultaneously ostracizing any parent or taxpayer who demands accountability. With the help of the teachers unions, these administrators lobby the State Assembly for more funding. Being nearly autonomous in it's control of education and comprised largely of liberal New York City Democrats, the Assembly eagerly accepts their "declaration of dependence", with the understanding that the unions will continue to "teach" our children that; Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bob Dole are all senile old men, that budget cuts are "Draconian", and that conservative Republicans are evil and want to starve them, pollute the environment and kill Bambi.

For parents who are truly concerned about the direction of education in New York, I suggest contacting your local grass roots "Citizen\Taxpayer Association". Our children need your involvement more than they need your money.

-DRC