Insight
Then and now
Sep 17, 2009 11:34 AM
The school system under mayoral control
School staffs are inundated with data on students. Administrators have at hand vast storehouses of data about schools. But data on the school system can be harder to come by.
It resides in obscure places. It’s not always apples to apples. And sometimes it just mysteriously disappears. Yet without it, we’re looking at the trees and not the forest. It’s possible to miss big trends taking place under our noses.
So let’s start off the year with a big-picture portrait of the system, using some “then and now” comparisons.
Seven years of tumult
Since the mayor took over the schools in 2002, the education system has gone through seven years of exceptional tumult and change. In administration, organization, financing, curriculum and personnel, the system has been turned inside out, more than once.
Yet over those seven years some things — quite a few things, actually — are not much changed. The counts and composition of students and staff are quite similar to what they were seven years ago.
After a reorganization that all but eliminated the 32 school districts, they are back as the operating administrative units. Average class sizes are fractionally lower, with noticeable reductions in high school and upper elementary grades, but the reductions are certainly not dramatic. (They actually rose last year across the board.) And the number of educators in the system has remained quite stable.
Many of the changes over this mayor’s tenure have come at the administrative level, not at the classroom level. There have been large investments in technology and in management. Test scores and graduation rates show higher performance (the subject of a future column). But many other system indicators remain quite similar from 2002 to 2009.
Budget
The school operating budget is one area that has grown dramatically. It is more than half again as large as it was — $18.3 billion for this school year versus $11.5 billion in 2002, a 59 percent increase.
Along with that increase, there is a marked shift in the proportions of revenue that come from the three main sources: the city, the state and the federal government. The city boasts of its huge investment in the schools under mayoral control — and indeed, the city contribution grew from $4.9 billion in 2002 to $7.4 billion today. But the city’s share of the school spending pie has declined, to 40 percent in 2009 from 42 percent in 2002.
The state’s contribution has also gone down percentage-wise, though the dollar amount has grown. Stepping into the breach is the federal government. The feds sent an extra $1 billion in stimulus funds to the city schools this year, on top of $1.7 billion in other federal funds, for a 15 percent share of the total pie, up from 9 percent in 2002.
(If not for that stimulus boost, education spending would have declined this year from 2008. There was a 5 percent cut to schools from what they expected to receive this year that has forced painful cancellations and excessing. But without the federal funds that the UFT fought hard for, it would have been far worse.)
Teachers and staff
With all the new money, there aren’t that many more teachers or other educators in the system. There are hundreds more schools (from 1,198 in 2002 to more than 1,500 now). But there are fewer general education classroom teachers. There are more special education teachers and paras. But the total teacher count, including out-of-classroom teachers, is down.
Since September 2002, the system has added 332 new guidance counselors and about 125 more psychologists and social workers. However, there are fewer lab techs.
Teacher salaries went up dramatically, by 43 percent from 2002 to 2009, though that has not eaten up all the 59 percent budget increase, despite what union critics claim.
The percentage of teachers with more than five years experience has risen sharply, perhaps tied to that salary boost. But 42 percent of new teachers still leave within five years. There has been a small decline in black teachers, a trend that worries some observers, and no increase in Hispanic teachers despite a surge in Hispanic enrollment.
Students
Every year since 2002, enrollment has gone down. The schools served nearly 1.1 million students in 2002 and serve 969,599 today, a drop of 122,000 students. First, the declines were noticeable in the elementary schools, then the decreases moved into the high schools. Projections call for continued decreases systemwide over the next couple of years.
Of course, some areas are experiencing bulges, even as overall enrollment goes down. There was a crush of Manhattan and Queens kindergartners who were wait-listed for their neighborhood schools this year. And some high schools are on triple session.
The big picture doesn’t matter much to a kindergartner who must travel miles to school or to a high school student sitting on a radiator in a class of 34.
In addition, there are significant increases in some categories of high-needs students, such as students with disabilities and English language learners. There are more Hispanics and fewer whites. The percentage of students in poverty, as measured by those receiving free- and reduced-price lunch, declined a little in 2008 (latest available) though that number could grow as the recession takes its toll.
Stepping back, what this “numbers picture” reveals is first of all an enormous and expensive school system. The sheer numbers of students and staff mean that governance is a challenge — as are the diversity and level of needs of its students.
Yet there are more than 100,000 educators in New York who have dedicated their working lives to these students. Each plays a crucial (if not always recognized) role in this giant system, and many children’s lives will be transformed by them this year, as in every school year in history.
