While the battles and debates that drag New York’s budget process out sometimes weeks beyond the deadline vary year to year, education funding is always guaranteed to be a key topic of conversation as the process plays out.

It’s typically framed around whether there will be a continuation of a string of significant increases in school aid, and if so, how much. 

This year, the conversation had a new twist, as it was the first since the Rockefeller Institute was tasked with studying and offering recommendations for how to reform the badly outdated Foundation Aid formula, the primary form of school aid — so tasked following another budget battle in 2024 over Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to end the practice of ensuring districts don’t see a year-over-year drop in aid, known as Save Harmless.

For fiscal year 2026, the end result was $37.6 billion in overall education funding and a formula that was tweaked to update poverty metrics and account for some variables like English Language Learners and vocational programming. 

The total funding number itself is significant, and depending on who you ask is either a mark of the state’s determination to provide for students or an invitation to ask the question: what does the state have to show for it?

Right-leaning think thank Empire Center for Public Policy has set out to ask the latter, with a new study known as the K-12 SOS, which looks to find out why New York’s schools score below the U.S. average in Grade 4 and Grade 8 reading and math exams according to NAEP, also known as "The Nation's Report Card,” despite significantly higher funding than other states.

“Fourth-grade New Yorkers read worse than their peers in Mississippi and Louisiana, I don’t think that’s the outcome that New Yorkers want for their kids,” said President and CEO Zilvinas Silenas. “There is not enough focus on performance.”

The study sets out to look into data from select districts and compare it to other states and similarly sized districts in New York in what Zilvinas described as an effort to give parents and state leaders a concrete look the realities in hopes of getting decision makers under the hood for in-depth reforms.

“With the amount New York spends on education, we should have the best schools in the world because we outspend every other state,” he said.

Citizens Budget Commission raised similar alarm bells with a report earlier this year.

Education finance expert Dr. Rick Timbs, executive director of the Statewide School Finance Consortium, says the study sets an important and admirable goal, but represents an oversimplification of the unique challenges facing New York’s schools.

“I think what we often try to do is find easy ways to explain complex situations, and it doesn’t serve us very well,” he said. “We have huge urban centers that many states do not have, our population of our state with just the students in it far exceeds the population of some other states including all of the people.”

He cautioned that relying heavily on state-by-state comparisons might not be a good driver for true reform, even if test scores do suggest a need.

“I think it’s a good idea to track our progress and compare ourselves to other states,” he said. “But I think when we do it, we have to do it very carefully because there are a lot of variables.”

He cautioned that even comparing similar districts on a local or statewide level requires a high attention to detail, and education experts agree that there are problems with using NAEP data and even small changes in student population can render test score comparisons unreliable year over year.

“Let’s say we have two school districts sitting next to each other and one has 85% of the kids reading at grade level and the other one has 25, but the one that has 25 has a huge population of children with special needs, English Language Learners,” he said, adding “We aren’t really comparing apples to apples.”

While Silenas argued that the Rockefeller Institute’s Foundation Aid study didn’t go far enough in its scope, Timbs said the study identified important methods of better allocating funding that the state has yet to even try to implement.

“We’ve got to do more with special education kids, this 1.41 weighting with special education kids has been there for like 20 years, and some of these cost screens, or how much they’re going to pay per child with high-cost aid, hasn’t changed in decades,” he said.

When it comes to the allocation of funding, Tim Ruffinen, director of communications and press officer for the state Division of the Budget, told Spectrum News 1 in a statement that adjustments to the formula are already intended to deliver more funding to districts with higher needs and are a work in progress.

“Over the past four years, New York State has delivered record levels of funding to our schools, with over $9 billion in increases in school aid. This year’s Enacted Budget included several tweaks to the Foundation Aid Formula, which are intended to distribute funding more equitably, as well as a 2% minimum increase for all districts, providing high-need districts the financial resources they require to improve student outcomes,” he said. “We will continue to review and assess funding levels with our Legislative partners in upcoming fiscal years, with a shared goal of delivering the best possible outcomes for the next generation of New Yorkers.”

Both the study and Silenas are highly critical of the state Department of Education, arguing they are simply allowing the state to lag behind while taking limited action to address the problem.

“The biggest thing that is not adding up to me is why is the Department of Education not worried about this?” He asked. “The way they see education is, let’s give education more money and it will resolve itself.”

New York State Department of Education spokesperson JP O’Hare fired back, calling into question the very bones of the study. 

“This report is nothing more than a series of strategically cherry-picked data sets, strung together in a way that supports the “conclusion” that more money should equal higher achievement,” he told Spectrum News 1. “The bottom line is that New York State provides a level of services and support (including transportation and safe facilities) that far outpace what other states across the country require, as well as the federal minimums for students with disabilities and English Language Learners. New York’s education spending figures reflect that the state is working to provide students with the support systems they need to be successful, including those with disabilities, significant cognitive difficulties, and special needs. While expensive, the alternative is to provide the bare minimum to students, which certainly won’t improve achievement.”