More than 25 percent of public school teachers and administrators in school districts outside New York City were paid more than $100,000 as of 2018-19, according to salary data posted today at SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s transparency website. Read More
Mount Morris had the highest increase among any district outside of New York City, according to a report released Tuesday by The Empire Center for Public Policy in Albany. Read More
The report -- released Tuesday by Empire Center, an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank based in Albany -- found that 100 districts in the state’s nearly 700 public school districts had increased enrollment from 2008-2009 to 2018-2019, including New York City’s five boroughs. Read More
Where have all the kids gone? The number of students enrolled in New York state public schools is the lowest recorded in 30 years, a new Empire Center for Public Policy study released Tuesday reveals. Read More
Will the Regents and education bureaucrats succeed in forcing nonpublic schools to conform to unprecedented state control? Read More
Think the problem’s skimpy funding? Sorry: In 2017, the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon reported in May, New York shelled out 89% more per kid than the national average. And that gap has been growing fast: In 1997, per-pupil outlays here were just 45% above average. Read More
Last week’s surprise resignation of the state education commissioner, MaryEllen Elia, leaves New York schools at a crossroads. Depending on whom the Board of Regents selects to succeed Elia, the commissioner can serve as a force for reform or for preserving a troubled status quo. Read More
There's good news and bad news about Rochester schools from a new study comparing the variation in educational quality within urban educational systems. The good news: measured by standardized pupil proficiency scores, there's only an 8.6 percentage point gap between good and bad schools in Rochester. The bad news: even Rochester's good schools—those in the 75th percentile—have the lowest proficiency scores among the 68 largest urban school systems in the country. Read More