New York's Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, has drawn down its own number for how much additional aid New York City's schools are due to fund a "sound and basic" education from at least $4 billion to about $2 billion. While both numbers are more or less made from whole cloth (and while the court is in fact unable to compel the legislature to spend any given sum, which is part of why the case is now in its second decade and still ongoing), the lower number is good news for Eliot Spitzer, who when all is said and done just gained about a billion dollars in loose funds he'll badly need as he inherits the state's fast-spending, slowly sinking ship.

There's an irony in the court backing into a lower number to "correct" the state's school funding mechanism, since the state formula is itself a political agreement dressed up as a formula, so that the winners fight furiously against any sensible reform that might reduce their cut.

Factor in the extent to which education spending in the state outside of New York City is a function of local property taxes, and the complicated set of state rebates to shift the burden around, and you have a system intended to defy analysis and reform. So far, it's working perfectly.

More coming in our next featured essay…