Opinion ID: 2048181
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Low-Income Weighting

Text: A successful schools analysis produces base expenditures, which are estimated costs per pupil. However, such base expenditures must then be multiplied by weightings for students with special needs, who require such costly accommodations as differentiated curricula, smaller class sizes, assistive technology and classroom aides. Standard & Poor's assigned a weighting of 2.1 to students with disabilities (special-education students); 1.35 to economically disadvantaged students; and 1.2 to students with limited English proficiency. Although the parties and referees agree that the special-education and English-language weightings were appropriate, the record reflects that the 1.35 low-income weighting applied by Standard & Poor'saccording to which $1.35 must be allocated to students in poverty for every dollar spent on a student not in povertywas irrational and cannot be sustained. Defendants' principal rationale for choosing this weightinga choice that drew considerable criticism from the witnesses and amiciwas that the Standard & Poor's study had identified 1.35 as the proper adjustment for educating economically disadvantaged students. But Standard & Poor's had in fact emphasized that 1.35 was simply a figure that it had drawn from a review of research literature on the coefficients that education agencies tend to use in practice, and that insufficient empirical evidence exists in New York to determine how much additional funding is actually needed for different categories of students with special needs to consistently perform at intended achievement levels (Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services, Resource Adequacy Study for the New York State Commission on Education Reform, at 8-9 [2004]). [5] As a result, Standard & Poor's made clear that its study does not explicitly recommend a particular set of weightings. ( Id. ) Unlike Standard & Poor's, the Regents, in determining that a higher poverty weighting was required, had focused on the specific circumstances of New York City schools, including an especially heavy concentration of high-needs students, very low graduation rates, large classes and a disproportionate number of schools in need of improvement, and thereby determined that the appropriate low-income weighting for New York City was 1.8. With respect to the state as a whole, the Regents recommended weightings for low-income students ranging from 1.5 to 2.0, depending on the concentration of poverty in the district. Because the Standard & Poor's weighting of 1.35 for low-income students was not focused on the specific circumstances of New York City schools, its use to determine the actual cost of providing a sound basic education to economically disadvantaged New York City students was irrational, as the referees found. The referees thus properly determined that a poverty weighting of at least 1.5the lower end of the range proposed by the Regentsmust instead be used.