TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cultural Education
New York State Knowledge Initiative (NYKI)
Vocational and Educational Service to Individuals with Disabilities (VESID)
Compliance with Federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
Elementary, Middle, Secondary & Continuing Education
Office of the Professions
Authority to Charge a Fee to Enforce the Prosecution of Illegal Practice of a Profession
Higher Education
Increased Access to College for Students with Disabilities
Ensure Excellence and Opportunity for All Students in Higher Education
Authority to Charge a Fee to Accredit Institutions of Higher Education
Strengthen Teachers: Recruitment, Retention and Skills Development
Streamlining School District Planning and Reporting Requirements
Compliance with Federal Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA)
Update the Public Accountancy Statute
Allow Retired Teachers to Teach in Shortage Subjects Without a Salary Cap
REGENTS BUDGET PRIORITIES
The Regents support the 2007-2008 Executive budget recommendations for elementary and secondary education, which will give students, schools and districts the resources and funding system they need. Enactment of this budget will help ensure that all students will have the opportunity to meet state learning standards. The Regents have in prior years advanced a multi-year proposal recommending a transition to a foundation aid formula based on the costs of successful educational programs. This budget accomplishes that goal.
The Executive budget calls for a school aid increase of $1.4 billion for school year 2007-08, with a majority of the increase targeted to high need school districts. It also contains an accountability proposal designed to ensure that the additional resources allocated will be used effectively and efficiently.
Foundation Aid consolidates approximately 30 aid formulas into one that is simple and transparent. It is based on the cost of general education in successful school districts, reflects differences in pupil needs and regional costs and provides predictability to all school districts with a three percent guaranteed minimum increase.
The Regents also support these recommendations in the Executive budget:
This program would strengthen New York’s libraries as community spaces and knowledge centers for all residents (www.nyki.nysed.gov ). The Regents support the Executive budget’s proposed $14 million for library construction and $3 million in supplemental operating aid to library systems that was first appropriated by the legislature in the 2006-07 state budget.
Libraries as Community Spaces: Many of New York’s public library buildings are rapidly deteriorating. There is a documented $1.7 billion statewide need for renovation and construction (http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/libdev/construc ).
Libraries as Knowledge Centers: The education achievement gap prevents many New York students from taking their place in the global workforce and economy. Many New York colleges and universities cannot provide state-of-the art information to attract top faculty and students because of the high cost of individual electronic subscriptions. The State Education Department buys periodicals, journals and other information resources and shares them through the New York Online Virtual Electronic Library (NOVELNY) (www.novelnewyork.org ). This puts a high quality library at everyone’s fingertips, with information resources not freely available on the Internet. It will save libraries a significant amount of money that they can invest in other resources. Even small institutions would have available the powerful information tools usually reserved for only the largest libraries.
NOVELNY is currently funded with temporary federal dollars. Our libraries and library systems (groups of libraries that form associations and work together to serve a larger region) as well as NOVELNY need permanent state support if they are to become primary destinations for information, research and expert assistance for students, business people, faculty, researchers and the general public. When New York’s high school, college and university students can access NOVELNY from their home, school or public library, they will be better prepared to excel in math, science, medicine and technology.
New York currently invests no state money in NOVELNYand ranks 36th out of 50 states in public funding for electronic resources. Other states fund similar on-line library programs, dramatically increasing their libraries’ purchasing power. New Jersey, Virginia, Ohio, Alabama and North Carolina spend a combined $33.8 million a year. The libraries leverage state dollars, further increasing their ability to purchase services.
New York’s annual investment of $10 million for NOVELNY would leverage access to more than $250 million in online reference and research materials through cost-effective statewide licensing and purchasing of electronic media and other informational resources.
The Regents charter museums and other educational institutions and provide standards for chartered museums. In 2003, 81 percent of museums reported visits by students. In all, more than 3 million students visit New York museums annually. Even so, museums currently do not receive state funding to create programs to help students learn about the exhibits, and there is a lack of both models and curricula.
Although New York’s major scientific, cultural and arts institutions have some programs for students that are aligned with the state learning standards, and although they may have materials, training and lesson plans that can be used by teachers before and after student visits, they still are not fully engaged in educating pre-kindergarten through college students in a comprehensive and systematic way.
$30 million in new funding would empower New York’s museums, historical societies and performing arts institutions to create K-12 educational programs aligned with the state learning standards. That funding would include:
This program would enable museums and New York’s other cultural institutions to provide powerful and exciting pathways for students to explore history, art, geology, music, science, anthropology, archeology, and other subjects through hands-on learning that children find lively and exciting.
The transition from youth to adulthood presents unique challenges for people with disabilities. New York’s 36 Independent Living Centers (ILCs) assist these young people by teaching life skills to help them succeed in work and their communities. They serve over 80,000 people and thousands of New York businesses. The ILCs assist school districts with planning and services. They are the only consumer controlled, community based, non-residential, not-for-profit network operating on a model driven by their peers and that emphasizes self-help. The centers save the state money by helping people become productive citizens. Demand for ILC services increased 27% from 2000 to 2007 while funding increased only 11%. Additional funding will enable New York’s 36 Independent Living Centers to keep pace with demand and enhance access to essential community-based supports – as an alternative to life in more costly institutional settings.
$5 million would give these centers, located throughout New York, the resources to help individuals with disabilities successfully make the transition from youth to adulthood as they enter the job market or move on to other services.
The Regents support the Executive budget proposal for a $98 million increase in early childhood education funding, so all school districts can have full-day kindergarten by the 2010-2011 school year.
The Regents are recommending that the compulsory school age be lowered to 5. If children are to have the skills necessary to live in a global economy that places a premium on technology and information and is evolving at a very rapid pace, they need to have the solid foundation that pre-kindergarten and kindergarten bring. The current law that makes kindergarten optional and allows school districts to offer only half-day kindergarten programs hinders efforts to improve early childhood education and does not provide all students with an equal opportunity for and access to a good start in their educational career.
The National Institute for Early Education Research found that high-quality full-day kindergarten provides children a greater degree of academic and social/emotional success. Other scientific studies have found that students have higher reading skills when they participate in full-day kindergarten and children who attend full-day kindergarten learn more literacy and math than those in half-day classes. Research shows that a child’s reading proficiency at the end of first grade predicts with 88% reliability how that child will read at the end of third grade. Later academic success is directly linked to the knowledge and skills acquired by age 6.
Furthermore, early education has strong economic benefits with significantly lower dropout rates and less need for special education or remedial programs, not to mention benefits to academia, business and the economy. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis notes that, “Early childhood development programs are rarely portrayed as economic development initiatives….[;]that is a mistake. [S]tudies find that well-focused investments in early childhood development yield high public as well as private returns.”
The Executive’s proposal will ensure that all children receive equal access to high quality early education programs vital to creating a strong educational foundation. This investment will make certain that today’s children have the essential building blocks to achieve throughout their academic career and that they are ready to meet the needs of a global community.
The Regents support the Executive budget proposal for a $20 million increase and 77 staff positions for new accountability initiatives to enhance the Department’s ability to establish and revise performance standards for schools and districts, monitor and assess their academic progress and oversee, investigate and ensure that school districts are using funds and other resources effectively and properly.
The Regents request $500,000 to create a new Office of Educational and Academic Technology to increase and improve SED’s ability to use computer technology to more efficiently collect and analyze data to monitor and improve student performance.
Public protection is the primary mission of the State Education Department’s
(SED) Office of Professional Responsibility. Unlicensed persons who practice
illegally represent a great danger to public safety.
In response to this critical threat, Chapter 615 of the Laws of 2003 gave SED
the authority to prosecute illegal practice. For the first time, SED could
issue cease and desist orders targeting unlicensed persons. Previously,
while the Office of Professional Discipline investigated allegations of illegal
practice, if substantiated those cases had to be referred to the attorney general’s
office for further action. Because of the higher standard of proof in criminal
cases (beyond a reasonable doubt) and stronger resource demands, very few of
those cases were prosecuted successfully as criminal cases.
Illegal practice puts the public at great risk, hurts licensed professionals,
and jeopardizes SED’s ability to oversee and regulate the safe practice
of the professions. Yet, SED has been unable to fully implement the new law
because it contained no funding to support this additional work. The
Office of Professional Discipline continues to investigate allegations of illegal
practice and refers the most egregious cases to the attorney general’s
office for prosecution.
The wide range of new activities required under Chapter 615 to protect the
public, compounded with SED’s budgetary constraints make designated funding
an imperative for curtailing illegal practice. Giving SED the statutory authority
to impose a $10 surcharge on each triennial new registration and re-registration
currently assessed to Title VIII professionals, dedicated to stemming illegal
practice, would provide an adequate funding stream. Currently, no state funding
is provided for this important function. The fee is expected to generate roughly
$2 million annually.
Because of the dramatic impact illegal practice has on the licensed professions,
a coalition of associations representing 750,000 professionals supports this
fee—the equivalent of a $3.33 annual surcharge to licensees—to
fund the prosecution of illegal practice.
Students with disabilities are graduating from high school and going to college
in higher numbers than ever before. It is critically important that colleges
have the necessary resources to provide effective programs so that these students
may succeed. Because the cost to level the playing field for disabled
students is prohibitive for some colleges and universities, students often
are forced to choose a college based on the support services
available instead of academic excellence. Tuition and student fees do not cover
the cost of these accommodations. For example, an adaptive computer system
can cost $3,000. Interpreter services for a deaf student can cost up to $40,000
per academic year.
The cost of captioning services for a deaf student could be as high as $1,000
per week.
In conjunction with the Board of Regents, the State University of New York (SUNY), the City University of New York (CUNY), the independent colleges and universities, and the degree-granting proprietary colleges in New York are supporting a request for $15 million in the first year and up to $30 million for the next four years to enable colleges to provide support services. Funding would be allocated annually to the four higher education sectors based on the number of students enrolled (full time and part time, undergraduate and graduate) two years prior. All institutions of higher education that grant degrees would be eligible. These funds would not supplant monies the higher education sectors receive from existing sources. Recipients would have to demonstrate how they have increased enrollment, retention and graduation rates of students with disabilities.
This funding would help increase the number of historically underrepresented and disadvantaged students in college by strengthening the opportunity programs (HEOP, STEP/CSTEP, Liberty Partnership Program) and improving graduation rates for all students.
The Board of Regents is the only state entity recognized by the U.S. Department
of Education as a national accreditation body for institutions of higher education.
Accreditation is critically important to ensure that institutions continue
to offer high quality programs and that graduates will emerge equipped to enter
the workforce and make a meaningful contribution to society. Accreditation
also allows college students to get financial aid from the federal government,
including Pell grants and guaranteed student loans.
Accreditation by the Board of Regents is similar to that of other federally
recognized accrediting bodies but it gives New York colleges and universities
another, less costly option. Twenty-two New York colleges and universities
currently use the Board of Regents as their accrediting body. In some
cases this is because they have a special mission (e.g. graduate education,
theology or business) that the national organizations cannot accommodate or
they prefer the consistency between New York’s program registration requirements
and its accreditation standards.
While other accrediting organizations charge fees ranging from $1,000 to $18,000
per
year based on the size of the institution, the State Education Department collects
no fee for this labor intensive process. SED requests authority to collect
modest fees for this service. The fees would be considerably less than those
charged by national accrediting organizations. This would not duplicate
other organizations’ services; it would provide
a cost-effective alternative. This program would be self-sufficient;
no state funding would be needed.
The Regents support the Executive budget proposal to fund the Teachers of Tomorrow program ($25 million), which enlists skilled veteran teachers to deliver support to novice teachers, and the Teacher Opportunity Corps ($713,000) which helps teachers meet the needs of students at risk.
The Regents request an additional $29.8 million to expand the Teachers of Tomorrow and the Teacher Opportunity Corp programs and for grants to colleges to prepare high school and community college students to enter professional education programs. Encouraging historically underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students to enter teaching and helping prepare high school and community college students to enter professional education programs would strengthen the teaching workforce and enable New York to recruit and retain more certified teachers, especially in areas such as math, science, special education and bilingual education.
REGENTS
LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES
This is a three-pronged legislative proposal to reduce the paperwork burden on school districts and BOCES.
First, it would eliminate a substantial portion of the reporting and planning requirements imposed by state statute. A June 2003 report to the governor and legislature and additional analysis has identified 70 state statutes that require school districts and BOCES to submit information to the State Education Department. Nineteen of these requirements would be eliminated entirely with another eight substantially reduced. The remaining statutory requirements are needed for fiscal and programmatic accountability or student health or safety.
Second, once this legislation is passed, SED would review its regulations and eliminate those that are duplicative or unnecessary.
Third, SED would establish a streamlined and unified data collection system to eliminate duplicative reporting and limit plans and reports to those necessary to carry out critical state interests, such as: maintaining accountability, closing the gap between expected and actual student achievement and protecting health and safety in schools.
Federal statutory requirements would be streamlined where possible and state and federal requirements would be aligned. The net effect would be to require data reporting only once and to continuously improve data collection. Some data would still be collected and kept by districts, but revised reporting requirements would eliminate unnecessary paperwork.
State legislation to implement the provisions of IDEA 2004, first enacted in Chapter 352 of the Laws of 2005, contained a one-year sunset. Chapter 430 of the Laws of 2006 extended Chapter 352 for an additional year, and made certain other amendments that will expire and be deemed repealed on June 30, 2007. Part H of Chapter 61 of the Laws of 2006 amended Education Law §3602-c to delay implementation of provisions relating to services to nonpublic school students by one year. Those provisions also will sunset on June 30, 2007.
The United States Department of Education has given states until June 30, 2007 to make conforming changes to state law. SED will propose legislation to amend state law to implement IDEA 2004 and the final IDEA regulations that went into effect on October 13, 2006. In addition to making the provisions of Chapter 352 of the Laws of 2005 and Chapter 430 of the Laws of 2006 permanent, SED’s proposal will include additional conforming changes resulting from the final IDEA regulations, as well as certain other changes that were included in the 2006 Regents legislative proposal on IDEA implementation, such as provisions relating to due process and parents’ and school districts’ rights to reach agreement under certain circumstances.
The practice of public accountancy has evolved over the past half century to include professional services and practices that were not offered when the current statute was enacted in 1947. Expanding the definition of practice to include all types of professional services that reflect contemporary business practices, including tax return preparation, financial planning, management consulting, investment management and the like, would strengthen public protection.
The general public expects CPAs to be licensed and held accountable for these
important financial services, but the Regents cannot take disciplinary action
when licensees practice in an unethical or incompetent manner because their
services do not fall within the current statutory scope of practice for accountants.
SED’s legislative proposal would include these services within the scope
of practice and licensees practicing in these areas would be subject to professional
discipline by the Regents.
This proposal also includes a number of other provisions that would increase
public protection and provide adequate oversight, including: removing the continuing
education exemptions for CPAs; making it easier for CPAs in other jurisdictions
to become licensed in New York; requiring that all firms providing public accountancy
services in New York be registered; requiring that all firms that perform attest
or compilation services participate in a mandatory quality review process;
raising the maximum dollar amount of fines for misconduct; establishing profession-specific
fines for professional misconduct; and establishing a public accountancy oversight
unit in SED to handle misconduct complaints.
The current shortage of qualified, certified teachers in specific subject areas,
such as science, math special education, technology education and bilingual
education, and in specific urban and rural schools and districts throughout
New York is projected to grow. Schools under registration review and
other low performing schools with challenging teaching environments historically
have difficulty attracting qualified teachers. For both urban and
rural high-need schools, the challenge is to attract candidates with teaching
certificates to schools that cannot offer the salaries available in higher
wealth school districts and attract teachers with the specialized skills needed
in shortage subjects.
Other states with similar teacher shortages draw on their pool of retired persons
who hold teaching certificates in New York. As the baby boomers reach
retirement age, the number of retired teachers will increase. However,
a cap is currently imposed on the salaries of New York retirees who choose
to work in New York state or local government. Many retired teachers
wish to return to teaching but can do so only in the private sector or in other
states or the federal system in which there is no salary cap due to receiving
retirement benefits. Many would continue to teach in New York if the
salary cap were lifted.
The Retirement and Social Security Law should be amended to permit retired public employees who hold an appropriate teaching certificate in shortage areas to be employed in certain schools and teach specified subjects without a cap on the salary they earn while also receiving a state pension. This would add to the prospective pool of qualified teachers available to serve in schools under registration review (SURR schools) and other high-need public schools and to teach in shortage subject areas.