A primer on New York State public school pensions

A primer on New York State public school pensions provided by Capital Region BOCES:

New York state’s school district employees outside of New York City generally belong to one of two public pension systems – the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) and the New York State Employee Retirement System (ERS).

The pension benefit that individual retirees receive depend on various factors, including: which system they are in; their salary; the date employment began; years of service; and age at retirement.

Pension systems have three sources of revenue: employee contributions, employer contributions (those from state and local government and school districts), and the investment returns on these contributions.

Employee contributions are based on the date employment began. Employees hired before July 1976 were not required to contribute. Those hired since then have had to contribute 3% of their salaries for at least a portion of their careers; and new employees will contribute 3% or more for the duration of employment.

How are the contributions of state and local governments and school districts determined?  Employer contributions are determined according to an accounting model that takes into account the future liabilities (pension payouts) of the system and the value of the fund. The state sets employer contribution levels each year in order to ensure that the systems are fully funded in relation to future obligations.

Market conditions are a major factor in determining pension costs.  The contribution rates of the state pension systems are set annually by accounting for the value of the funds in relation to future obligations. Therefore, as markets fluctuate—and cause the value of the ERS and TRS investments to change—so do the rates of employer contributions to the systems. Thus, the economic slowdown of recent years has been a major driver of the increases in pension costs to school districts and other governments in New York state.

…
As pension costs rise student services are cut

In our local district, pension costs have risen more than 50% over the last two years and now account for 7.2% of the total budget, up from 5.1% in 2010-11.  This has meant ongoing cuts in student services as taxes are diverted to pay for pensions.  The trend is up, and by 2015 pension costs are expected to eat up 35 percent of property tax collections.

The good news

New York is one of a handful of states that entered the current economic downturn with a fully funded pension system, according to a 2010 study from The Pew Center on the States. Many states have funded their pension systems at levels far lower than their future obligations require, and some have skipped payments altogether— but not New York.

Related articles

• ‘Exploding pension costs are the single biggest threat to local government’s ability to deliver needed services’ (costofcollege.wordpress.com)

Beware of schools pitching lots of after-school help

Our local public school touts the teachers’ availability for after-school help sessions as a wonderful benefit.  But I’ve grown cynical.

If a school’s pitch to parents is: We have tons of Extra Help, that is a very bad sign.

It sounds like the school is saying: Your child will have lots of personal attention with his teacher, one on one.

But what is really being said is: your child will have trouble learning what the teacher is teaching.

I’m not saying that a young student seeking out personalized extra help from his teacher isn’t wonderful.  I just think that blithely telling a struggling youngster to go for after-school help is often not the most helpful advice.  It makes me think something is missing in the classroom, and it’s not being addressed.

I’d like to see the top five canned comments that are used in our school district’s report cards.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this one showed up on that list.

Should attend extra help sessions more often

New York public school mandate relief petition launched by BEST4NY

Westchester County taxpayers are letting legislators know that escalating state-mandated costs are eroding educational opportunities for our children.

A coalition of tax watchdog groups from 16 Westchester school districts is setting its sights on an elusive target: the complex web of state rules and regulations that force districts to spend tax money.

The new coalition, calling itself BEST4NY, is launching an online petition for local relief from state “mandates.” It is holding a public rally at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Greenburgh Town Hall.

“We felt like people who are concerned about the neighborhoods and villages and towns should be involved in this,” said Roger Scheiber of Hastings-on-Hudson, one of five executive committee members running the new group. “We realized that these school budgets are so complex and that once the tax cap got passed, the big issue, the really big issue, became mandates.”

BEST4NY, with the tagline “ Better Education and Smarter Taxation for New York”, is modeled after NYSUT, the New York teachers union and political lobbying organization that is a statewide organization with local chapters in different school districts.  In this way, BEST4NY could be viewed as a union for taxpayers and parents.

Widespread agreement that we need mandate relief

Growing numbers of school, municipal and business officials — not to mention Gov. Andrew Cuomo — are calling for the state Legislature to remove some of the hundreds of state rules that force communities to spend money. But the Legislature has been slow to reach agreements because there are so many mandates, great and small, and most are supported by special interests.

School districts say that mandates account for 15 to 20 percent of their overall budgets, dictating spending on everything from data collection and curriculum changes to pension contributions and construction.

Pensions are out of control

I’m glad to see that pension contributions are included in this petition since skyrocketing public pension costs are “the single biggest threat” to local schools’ ability to deliver educational  services for New York children.  In our local district, pension costs have risen more than 50% over the last two years and now account for 7.2% of the total budget, up from 5.1% in 2010-11.  This has meant ongoing cuts in student services as taxes are diverted to pay for pensions.  The trend is up, and by 2015 pension costs are expected to eat up 35 percent of property tax collections.

The Wicks Law and the Triborough Amendment are two other burdensome mandates

… the Wicks Law, which requires districts and local governments to use multiple contractors for construction projects; and the Triborough Amendment, which requires that public-employee union contracts stay in effect until a new contract is reached, perhaps reducing the incentive to negotiate.

“There is no traction in either house to repeal the Triborough because the unions oppose it,” said Castelli, who has sponsored bills to reform and repeal it. …

The  BEST4NY online petition calling for mandate relief:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/mandate-relief-now.html

Related articles

• Skyrocketing public pension costs are eroding educational opportunities for New York children (costofcollege.wordpress.com)

How many students complete the FAFSA at your high school?

If you’re curious how many students at your local high school complete the FAFSA, you can now check online.

For the first time, the Education Department is publicizing the number of seniors in each high school who have submitted and completed the Fafsa, which determines eligibility for many forms of financial aid. Students may have submitted their forms, but they may still be missing required information. Until the missing data is provided, the government cannot determine whether the student qualifies for federal aid.

High school counselors can use this information to see if their students are getting this part of the college application done.  I looked at our local high school to see what percentage of graduating seniors complete the FAFSA.  Out of about 210 students, only 121 (58%) had submitted FAFSA forms.  Over 90% of this school’s graduates typically go on to attend college, but apparently many do not anticipate qualifying for financial assistance.  Considering that this is a relatively affluent area in a high-cost part of the country, they are probably right.

Just out of curiosity, I looked at two other nearby high schools.

New Rochelle High School
Only 38% of the 770 high school seniors had submitted the FAFSA.  Since their student population is economically and ethnically diverse with over 90% of their graduates going on to college or other institutions of higher learning, I am somewhat surprised by the low percentage.  College Goal Sunday, a program dedicated to assisting students and families in accessing financial aid for college, hosted an all-day event at this high school in February.  I participated that day, and my impression was that  the school heavily promoted the availability of financial aid but many students remained unaware or uninterested.

Scarsdale High School
Only 23% of Scarsdale’s 370 high school seniors have submitted the FAFSA.  Virtually all their graduates go on to college, but it is unlikely that many from this very affluent community qualify for financial aid.

If you are curious you can check your local high school at Data Center FAFSA Completion by High School.

Related articles

• Boost your chances for college financial aid with these FAFSA tips (costofcollege.wordpress.com)
• File your FAFSA ASAP – financial aid is often first-come first-served (costofcollege.wordpress.com)

Differentiation places an unreasonable demand on teachers

Differentiating instruction in today’s mixed-proficiency classrooms is tough on teachers, and it’s certainly not always best for students.

83% [CORRECTED*] of teachers surveyed said that in practice, differentiated instruction is difficult to implement.

Malcolm Unwell explains it this way.

Perhaps there is a student who is just learning English in your class. And perhaps that student sits next to another who wants to have an in-depth discussion about Shakespeare. Should these two students prove difficult to teach at once, a normal person might consider what the root problem is — that they shouldn’t be in the same class. But the wise education bureaucrat knows that any problem here must be the teacher’s — he must not have differentiated his instruction enough.

Separating students according to ability is traditionally known as “tracking,” and it is frowned upon by the educational establishment.  Having students of varying ability in the same class is known as “inclusion,” and it is smiled upon.  While I was earning my MAT, I quickly realized that advocating tracking was simply not a valid position to put forth in education world, or “thought world” as E.D. Hirsch described it.  Tracking is unfair, and undemocratic.  It perpetuates the pattern of hegemony and domination present in the larger culture.

A local school administrator told parents that tracking students before 8th grade would permanently scar them.  Consequently, in our local district almost all classrooms up to 9th grade are mixed proficiency.  The elementary math program requires that the teacher spend the first part of class on a lesson geared towards all her students, with the expectation that everyone will learn something from it.  In reality, some struggling students still don’t comprehend it and some advanced students are bored.  After this whole group introduction, then the teacher is supposed to differentiate instruction for all proficiency levels.  Problems are “adapted for multiple ability levels”

These problems are sometimes referred to as “low threshold, high ceiling” problems because all students can understand the problem and solve some part of it (low threshold), but even the highest-ability students in the class will not easily complete it (high ceiling).

So teachers present adapted versions of the same problem, tailoring them to personal proficiency levels.  In theory it sounds nice, but in practice it must be much more challenging than teaching to a homogeneous group of students.  I always think of how inefficient it is, especially when reformers call out for longer school days.

It is now unacceptable to simply teach a lesson to a class, and assess the students according to how well he demonstrates his knowledge of the content.  Different students should have different lessons with different assessments.  Needless to say, this is completely unworkable  in practice.  It is doubtful, really, that any teacher actually does this.  If one did, it would likely be a chaotic disaster in which learning is incidental or nonexistent.

In this differentiated instruction environment, all students can be “successful”.  But parents should be aware that it may be at a “low threshold” of success.

* The percentage was off by 1 point before I corrected it.

Hat tip to Joanne Jacobs

‘Exploding pension costs are the single biggest threat to local government’s ability to deliver needed services’

It’s an issue that Democrats, Republicans and independents agree on: controlling skyrocketing pensions.

Politicians representing diverse constituencies are united under the umbrella of New York Leaders for Pension Reform, a group whose goal is cutting pension costs.  Members include New York City Michael Bloomberg, New Rochelle Mayor Noam Branson, and Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino.

“Exploding pension costs are the single biggest threat to local government’s ability to deliver needed services,” Astorino said in a statement released by the group Wednesday. “It will be impossible to provide any real property tax relief while operating under these debilitating labor costs that automatically increase every year at an unsustainable rate.”

In a small step to remedy this pension problem, last week Governor Cuomo won passage of Tier 6 reform legislation that he grandly labeled a sweeping pension reform plan that will save state and local governments and New York City more than $80 billion over the next 30 years.

Not so fast.

E.J. McMahon writing in The Torch calls Cuomo’s grandiose claims hyperbole, especially because taxpayers will see no benefit anytime soon since the changes only affect new employees.  And the “billions” in savings are based on the assumption that the Tier 6 structure remains unchanged for 30 years, a highly unlikely scenario.

Even using Coumo’s assumptions, New York City will only save 6% off the projected $359 billion in pension contributions over the next 30 years.  Clearly, this legislation only puts a small dent in the skyrocketing public pension costs that are eroding educational opportunities for New York children.  I foresee no change in time to help my child who is attending a public school where pension costs have risen more than 50% over the last two years and now account for 7.2% of the total budget, up from 5.1% in 2010-11.

The fundamental flaw in New York’s public pension system remains unresolved: like similar systems across the country, it exposes taxpayers to massive open-ended financial risks.  Pension accounting is incredibly arcane and opaque, setting up a proven moral hazard for elected officials who customarily have little regard for long-term consequences.  Unfortunately, the governor did not address this problem, or even acknowledge it.

You can read the entire LoHud.com article after the break.

Core Knowledge nonfiction curriculum proves better than ‘balanced literacy’

Children in New York City who learned to read using an experimental curriculum that emphasized nonfiction texts outperformed those at other schools that used methods that have been encouraged since the Bloomberg administration’s early days, according to a new study to be released Monday….

The less-effective curriculum, used in most public schools today, is called “balanced literacy”.  The approach that proved more effective in this study is part of the Core Knowledge program, designed by E.D. Hirsch, Jr.

Under the balanced literacy approach, which was used by seven of the comparison schools and remains the most popular method of teaching reading in the city’s schools, children are encouraged to develop a love of reading by choosing books that are of interest to them. Teachers spend less time directing instruction, and more time overseeing students as they work together.

Reading nonfiction writing is the key component of the Core Knowledge curriculum, which is based on the theory that children raised reading storybooks will lack the necessary background and vocabulary to understand history and science texts. While the curriculum allows children to read fiction, it also calls on them to knowledgeably discuss weather patterns, the solar system, and how ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia compare.

This principal still prefers balanced literacy for higher income students, believing Core Knowledge is only better for poor children.

“I like balanced literacy, I do; I think that it works well, especially for children who are coming into school having been read to every single day,” said Katie Grady, principal … “For my children, who are economically disadvantaged, they needed something more, and the Core Knowledge pilot had it,” Ms. Grady said….

A friend from a nearby school district pointed out that many middle- and upper-class parents would also prefer Core Knowledge for their own children.  She understands, as a college instructor married to a college professor, that even well-educated parents want their public schools to maintain high standards. Core Knowledge’s emphasis on nonfiction, historical fiction and classic literature is in contrast to balanced literacy’s focus on contemporary literature that is considered more “relevant” to students.  The young adult (YA) sections of libraries are well stocked with this genre, typified by stories of teen anguish and social injustice.

One example of such YA literature is The Outsiders, a young adult novel with a 5.1 reading level that has become a standard assignment in many middle schools. It doesn’t hurt that showing the movie version in class is an ideal way for teachers to fulfill mandated multimedia “21st century” skills instruction.  It sounds like a good time for students, but I agree with my friend when she expresses what she would have preferred for her son who attended public school out here in the affluent suburbs.

If we’d had the Core Knowledge sequence, he could have read The Outsiders for fun here at home while reading Longfellow, Dickinson, and Langston Hughes with his teacher at school.

Rich or poor, highly educated or high school dropout, it seems parents must often do much of the heavy lifting in content instruction while the schools are doing the fun “relevant” projects in the classroom.

Related:  Schools will use tracking and more nonfiction reading to improve achievement

Effects of 2% tax cap on New York public school budgets

In the wake of New York’s new 2% property tax cap, Lower Hudson Valley taxpayers are learning that “not a single district is likely to seek a cap override when budget votes are held May 15″.  According to school officials, it’s simply too risky to propose a budget that would exceed 2% growth.

Under the new system, districts must keep the increase in their tax levy — the amount of money raised in taxes — below their cap. The “starting” cap for each district is 2 percent, but several exemptions will give most districts slightly higher caps in the 2 percent to 3 percent range.

A new twist is that if a district has two budget proposals rejected by voters, it will have to freeze its property tax levy at this year’s level — requiring deep spending cuts. So if a district goes for an override and does not get a 60 percent super-majority, it will have only one chance to pass a budget under the cap….

“If you try for a super-majority and lose, you only get one more chance and could wind up with a zero (percent tax levy increase),” said Anne Byrne, Nanuet’s school board president.

Taxpayers have no appetite for bigger increases.

It was clear from superintendents’ responses that given the economic climate — and with all the attention heaped on Cuomo’s much-publicized cap — there is a consensus that trying to leapfrog the cap in its first year could be a bad move.

“I have met with our Citizens’ Budget Advisory Committee, held Superintendent’s Coffee Hours, and held a Community Budget Forum, in addition to many internal meetings with administrators, staff and the Board of Education,” Mount Pleasant Superintendent Susan Guiney wrote, “and it appears that while everyone does not wish the school district to endure any reductions in staff or programs, everyone feels that we should respect the tax cap levy and present a budget that complies.”

Is this cap on spending sustainable?

Going forward, many officials said, it will be increasingly difficult to stay under the cap without making staff and program cuts that no one likes.

“It will be next to impossible to continue cutting our budget by these unsustainable amounts,” Putnam Valley Superintendent Barbara Fuchs said.

Schools are working on short-term solutions.

Meanwhile, many districts are pushing legislators to eliminate costly state mandates for transportation, special education and other areas that would produce short-term savings.

But ignoring unsustainable pension cost increases

Meanwhile, they seem to be ignoring the single most costly mandate that is hurting education – skyrocketing pension expenses.  In my local school district, pension costs alone have risen over 50% in the last two years.  Meanwhile, the entire budget has only increased 6%.  Talk about unsustainable.

You can read the entire article below the break.

High school graduation goals do not include getting students ready for college

Sadly, I was not surprised to learn that our local high school does not include “college or career ready” as part of its goals for graduates.

The district has adopted graduation goals. A graduate of the Eastchester Schools will be:

• A respectful individual
• A life-long learner
• An effective communicator
• A complex thinker and problem solver
• A competent and responsible user of technology

Words have consequences.

At our local school only 59% of high school graduates are  “college or career ready” *.  This at an annual  cost of about $23,389 per pupil.

I prefer the Obama administration’s articulation of goals – much more specific, concrete, and measurable.

The goal for America’s educational system is clear: Every student should graduate from high school ready for college or a career.

Different school, similar problem
At a nearby school district, some parents are advocating that college preparation has to be front and center as goals, instead of  other squishy priorities like global awareness, global responsibility, and 21st century skills.

* UPDATE:  I changed “college ready” to “college or career ready” to accurately reflect what was measured.  In other words, 59% were not prepared for “post-secondary” success as determined by New York’s Aspirational Performance Measure (APM).

EngageNY.org – Regents reform agenda website for New York educators

John B. King Jr., the new state education commissioner, released back-to-school messages Tuesday and unveiled a new website — engageny.org — to provide information on the state’s reform initiatives.

He urged parents to ask their children, “What did you learn today? What does that mean?” And he asked educators to ask themselves: “Where are we in terms of our goals and where are we in terms of our students’ college and career readiness and how do we get there?”

Those are excellent questions educators should be asking.  It’s better than simply asking how innovative, how engaging or how technologically advanced they are.  These questions are good, but of secondary importance.

EngageNY is an evolving, collaborative platform for educators. As the Regents Reform Agenda moves forward across the state, we want you to be able to access and share resources that work for you.

A bit more about us: New York’s educators are always investigating better ways to improve what is being taught, how it’s being taught, and what to do about obstacles to student learning.

It was with these concerns in mind that we designed the Content Areas that Network Teams, administrators, principals, and teachers will use to facilitate change in schools:

1. Common Core standards
2. The Data-Driven Instruction cycle (DDI) and School-Based Inquiry (SBI)
3. Teacher/Leader effectiveness (performance management systems)

As reform priorities grow and evolve over time, EngageNY will grow and evolve, too – so that you always have the resources you need to ensure success in your school.