By B. Jason Brooks

Early this afternoon, the Senate Education Committee will again take up the proposed “School Paperwork Elimination and Reduction Act” in the form of bill number S.3874. This bill deals with issues tracing back eight years ago when the legislature directed the Commissioner of Education to report on plans for streamlining paperwork requirements and reports required of school districts.

The Education Department, in 2003, followed through with a report which documented that school districts were required to submit about 150 reports, plans and applications annually to the Department – requirements that built up over decades. This bill would eliminate a fraction of these requirements and, in some cases, would still require districts and BOCES to prepare reports but have them available rather than submit them to the state (acknowledging that no one in the Department would bother to read them anyway, I suppose).

Still, enactment of this bill makes sense and is a reasonable first step in what Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch promised will be Department regulatory review of all mandates on school districts. Perhaps Commissioner David Steiner’s appearance today before the Senate Education Committee will spur enactment.

Awaiting Modest Paperwork Relief: 8 Years and Counting

The frustrating aspect of this modest bill is twofold. First, why has the legislature – specifically, the Assembly – refused to pass this bill? The Senate has done so repeatedly since 2005 while the Assembly has refused. Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, the Education Committee Chair, has taken up this bill and passed it out of her committee from which it has languished in the Rules Committee. Second, if the legislature, after eight years still cannot follow through on its own directive to the Education Department, what hope do school districts have for any real mandate relief?

Public Charter Schools Face with More Mandates

Then there are public charter schools. Many legislators have fallen for this nonsense from the teacher unions calling for more “transparency and accountability” for charter schools, ignoring the fact that charters are held to more rigorous accountability than any district school. The Education Department, for example, explains much of this accountability in the state’s Race to the Top application (see here).

Yet, while the legislature, led by Senate Education Chair, Suzi Oppenheimer, appears to be finally moving on paperwork reduction for districts, Sen. Oppenheimer wants to add superfluous mandates on charter schools with a separate bill S.6925. Thus, charter schools with less money than districts could face more requirements having nothing to do with the Education Department’s goal of “results-oriented, standards-based education system.”

Slowness and contradictions abound – our state legislature at work.

B. Jason Brooks is director of research at the Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability.