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Looking ahead to an uncertain post-pandemic recovery, New York’s newly enacted state budget for fiscal year 2022 raises spending by staggering amounts that—barring an unlikely rapid return to peak 2019 economic activity in New York City—can't possibly be sustained for more than a few years. The budget is a mid-2020s fiscal disaster in the making: an incomplete bridge over a deepening river of red ink. Read More

New York’s spending on education and Medicaid will leave a hole in the budget after federal COVID relief money runs out Read More

Preliminary K-12 enrollment data released by the State Education Department (SED) in January suggests that public schools experienced a decline in enrollment of 66,424 K-12 students, or 2.6 percent compared to the 2019-20 school year. That would be the largest since 1981. Read More

Mayor de Blasio began his tenure by rewarding New York City’s worst-performing schools with added funding. He’s now set to end it by punishing the city’s best. Read More

New York’s special education system has ballooned to cover almost a fifth of public school K-12 students and special education accounts for about a quarter of all K-12 costs, all while producing middling results for Read More

The state’s current and projected fiscal condition make this an appropriate time to examine what drives high special education spending in New York, how it’s serving children and how it can be improved. Read More

New York City schools reopened this fall under terms dictated by the city's teacher and principal unions. Now, as city schools close -- once more at the unions' behest -- the city is left with thousands of extra teache Read More

The disruptions to K-12 education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic spurred Governor Cuomo to announce an initiative to “reimagine education.” This challenge should have policymakers asking what inadequacies have been exposed in our public education system, and which newly adopted practices should be permanent. Amidst a projected multi-year fiscal crisis, New York public schools should expect education spending cuts and should make plans to implement reforms without sacrificing quality. Read More

Families and businesses are watching their bottom lines and stretching each dollar. But House Democrats are pushing a plan to prevent America’s schools from doing the same thing. Read More

Education Week’s rankings do not measure what counts. New York’s substandard achievement coupled with highest-in-the-nation spending and above-average wealth means that when it comes to school quality, New York fails to pass the mark. Read More

If New York was a country in 2016—the most recent year for global education spending data—it would have boasted the highest per pupil expenditure in the world, even after subtracting 20 percent of state aid. Read More

Stephen T. Watson This year's school elections were delayed and then shifted entirely to voting by mail thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, which also shut down schools here and across the country. District officials worried this new meth Read More