Unconscionable

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Democrat, who voted against New York’s new budget, called it “an unconscionable, discriminatory addition to the school aid formula.” (nyt)

Brodsky is from Westchester county, where the median home value is in the range of $350,000 and high school graduation rates are near 99%. What is unconscionable is that in the Bronx, graduation rates hover around 50%, and more money is spent, per student, in Westchester County than in the Bronx. When children begin their academic lives three steps behind, of course the logical thing to do is to make sure that those children, slighted by the system and by a capricious fate, have all the advantages that the state can confer. As long as the graduation rate in the Westchester is 50 percentage points higher than that in the Bronx, all state aid should go do the Bronx and none should go to Westchester. The rich kids can hack it.

(Graduation rates, per pupil expenditure, and other stats taken from publicschoolreview.com)