#nydoe

New York state's education funding system discriminates against poor and minority students. School districts with high concentrations of Latinx and Black students are much more likely to be underfunded than majority-white districts, and face much wider funding gaps, an average deficit of more than $5,000 per student, a study called “Closing America’s Education Funding Gaps” Moreover, according to the report (EDUCATION EQUITY IN NEW YORK: A FORGOTTEN DREAM, 2020), predominantly Black and Latinx school districts are chronically underfunded, burdened not only with education resource deprivation but also with all the by-products of poor communities that are generally lacking in resources. Additionally in another report called “Educational Racism: Andrew Cuomo’s Record of Underfunding Public Schools in Black & Latino Communities,” states how Collectively, majority Black and Latino districts are owed $2.6 billion of all state operating aid. “The failure to fully fund Foundation Aid,” the report states, “results in the failure to adequately fund schools that are majority Black and Latino.” Hence depriving them of equal resources and opportunities to succeed.

it's not only a struggle over how much to spend on education. It is also a debate over how the money should be spent. The education budget needs to be better distributed to high-need, poor districts. Cuomo says the money is already going to districts that need it the most; they just aren't sending it to the poorest schools within their districts. The societal impact that chronic underfunding of schools in New York State has had negative and disparate impacts for minority and low-income students. It finds that “The graduation rate for these underfunded school districts is 69 percent compared to the 95 percent graduation rate wealthy districts in New York State have.".

To wrap it up, the abundance of underfunded schools in New York City is a large issue because Schools with smaller budgets, can't offer small classes and better programs, leading to lower student achievement, consequently creating socioeconomic obstacles in education. Education is the key to success and with underfunded schools, those children do not have an equal chance against students of other public schools that are adequately funded (EDUCATIONAL RACISM ANDREW CUOMO’S RECORD OF UNDERFUNDING PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN BLACK & LATINO COMMUNITIES, 2018).

hey guys 

With technology such a big part of everyday life, one difficulty in K-12 education is finding ways to harness it to close achievement gaps.

NYDOE’s Steven Hodas had a plan.

As the executive director of Innovate NYC Schools, Hodas conceived and still runs the Gap App Challenge for the New York City Department of Education, in which ed-tech developers were invited (eliciting over 200 submissions!) to showcase innovative, learning applications that are judged by a panel of educators and industry experts and then piloted in NYC schools.