The Foundation Aid Formula is designed to deliver more funding to New York districts with higher enrollments of low-income students who require additional resources to support their education. These higher need districts struggle to raise sufficient local dollars and rely more heavily on state aid to support their schools. As a result, the…

College tuition at public institutions across the country rose by 36.2 percent on average over the decade 2008-09 to 2018-19. The average total cost of college, accounting for all expenses such as room and board, across all institutions public and private grew by 22.4 percent. Students and their families are borrowing an enormous amount of money…

Since 1970 the number of teachers has increased 51.9 percent, while the number of students has increased 9.5 percent. In 1970, the student/teacher ratio was 22.3 and it is significantly lower at 16.1 today. Although there are projections indicating an increased demand for teachers going forward, the overall projections do not necessarily create a…

School districts, which generate the largest share of New York State's high local property taxes, have now entered their fourth annual budgeting cycle under a property tax cap enacted in 2011. The tax cap was adopted following a 30-year period in which school tax levies rose from $3.5 billion to $19.7 billion--an average of 6.0 percent a year…

"Leveled Literacy Intervention" ("LLI") is a short-term, supplementary, small-group literacy intervention designed to help struggling readers achieve grade-level competency. The intervention provides explicit instruction in phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, reading comprehension, oral language skills, and…

In this age of teacher accountability, school districts are increasingly interested in using the best possible methods in evaluating their teachers. This interest impacts new alternative certification teachers, as well as traditional teachers. An increasingly popular assessment is the Danielson Framework, which is a set of 22 components of…

In February 2015 a large group of scholars, researchers, and practitioners interested in P-20 finance issues gathered in St. Louis, Missouri, for the National Education Finance Academy's annual conference, on February 25-27, 2015 to discuss, among multiple topics, the state of P-20 finance in all 50 states. There were 35 states represented in the…

The "Analysis of School Finances in New York State School Districts" is an annual publication providing a meaningful perspective to staff in the Division of the Budget, the Legislature, the Education Department, and school officials concerning school expenditures, State Aid, and local support. This edition of the Analysis summarizes the…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) offers state leaders the opportunity to refocus their education systems on improving opportunity and outcomes for young people who have been underserved for far too long. The law includes a number of important requirements to focus on equity in school accountability, but it also leaves many key decisions up to…

The "Analysis of School Finances in New York State School Districts" is an annual publication providing a meaningful perspective to staff in the Division of the Budget, the Legislature, the Education Department, and school officials concerning school expenditures, State Aid, and local support. This edition of the Analysis summarizes the…

The purposes of this research were (a) to understand the frequency with which K-5 teachers use informational text in their routine classroom instruction, (b) to understand the percentage of informational text in classroom libraries, and (c) to explore teachers' attitudes about informational text. Survey data of 318 participants indicated that K-5…

This article draws from a qualitative case study of 22 teachers of African American males who participated in a screening event of the documentary Beyond the Bricks as part of a community engagement project in three cities: New Orleans, New York, and Oakland Through the lenses of critical race theory and the Matrix Achievement Paradigms typology,…

This technical brief describes updates to a database of dropout prevention programs and policies in 2006/07 created by the Regional Education Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands and described in the Issues & Answers report, "Piloting a searchable database of dropout prevention programs in nine low-income urban school districts in the…

"Can Scholarships Alone Help Students Succeed? Lessons from Two New York City Community Colleges" examined the effects of performance-based scholarships for low-income community college students (ages 22-35) who were required to enroll in remedial courses. The study evaluated the impact of the scholarships on continued community college…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress--commonly called "The Nation's Report Card"--tells a dismal story: Only 2% of high school seniors in 2010 could answer a simple question about the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark "Brown v. Board of Education" decision. And it's no surprise. Across the country, state educational…