New York States Public School Students example essay topic

Federal and state governments provide funds for specific purposes through formula grants and discretionary grants. Formula grants are awarded on a per-student basis, which makes them to penalize schools in the same way that formula funding does. It is important to have a support in small public schools funding from congressional staffers, who should be familiar with the particular school and with its problems. It is the public responsibility to provide all the information to these people. State discretionary grants are often made in response to proposals, however small school get their share of these funds too rarely. Small schools do not have adequate skills to produce focused proposals.

In some states, there is an assigned advocate for schools within the state department of education. This person is responsible for supporting and improving the proposal application process. The issue of unequal public school funding has been brought to courts. Recently, New York Supreme Court Judge Leland DeGrasse declared that New York States school funding system was not constitutional. The Judge handed a victory to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which had sued the state for inequalities in public school funding. To date 19 states have had their school funding programs deemed unconstitutional and been ordered by courts to correct inequalities.

It was ordered by New York judge to state Legislature to come up with solutions by September 15, 1999. The state was appealing the ruling. The Assembly in Albany has called on Governor George Pataki to withdraw his appeal, but oral arguments begin in October. CFE vs. State of New York has been an emotional case, filed in 1999 on behalf of the New York City schools, where there is more than enough testimony of crowded classes in neglected buildings, where the high drop-out rates and low test scores are mainly the result of under-funding by the state, the judge found. According to the Assembly's resolution, the Governor's appeal, "further delays ensuring equal educational opportunities to the students of New York and continues to hinder the State's most vulnerable children from achieving". A quarter of the state's schoolchildren live in poverty.

The Republican-controlled State Senate in New York has long championed aid formulas that favor the G.O.P. base in the suburbs and upstate. Justice Leland DeGrasse is unequivocal: New York's school aid formulas are unfair. They have deprived poor urban (and rural) districts of their fair share of the state's nearly $30 billion annual spending, while protecting affluent suburban schools from any decrease in state money. That violates state constitutional guarantees that every child is entitled to a "sound, basic education". A sound school district has adequate buildings, books, and resources, qualified teaching staff, and graduates who can be productive citizens.

The school aid formulas additionally violate federal civil rights laws because they affect minority students disproportionately. In order to prevent further discrimination of students this situation should be changed immediately. Statistic shows that 44 percent of all New York States public school students are minority ones. There had been some programs developed for improving education opportunities for these students.

For instance, The Algebra Project, which was founded in 1980's by Bob Moses, is math literacy program designed to help poor African-American students. Bob Moses once had said that children without sufficient mathematical skills would be tracked into economic underclass. The main strengths of this project are teacher training, peer learning, and community engagement. The Algebra Project today serves to 10,000 students in 28 different areas.

This project gives real help and can be used as successful example to create new projects aimed at the improvement of education level. There is also another project run by Bronx ACORN members. It is aimed at gaining resources for the South Bronx school zone, where the level of lowest-performing schools is quite big. This project organizes training for teachers and introduces reading programs in order to assist struggling students, who have a desire to study.