https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-public-schools-spending-students-ranking
For 18 years, up to and including Governor Kathy Hochul’s most recent proposal, the budget messages of New York’s last three governors have proudly noted that the state leads all others in school-district spending. What they omit is that, over that period, New York has remained in the middle of the pack on the National Assessments of Educational Progress. A recent report from the centrist Citizens’ Budget Commission, amplifying trends that I observed in 2022, presents a sobering picture of Albany’s failed policies.
The CBC observes that New York fourth-graders rank 32nd and 46th, respectively, on reading and math NAEP exams nationwide. Eighth-graders are 9th and 22nd, respectively. The state “now spends $36,293 per student, a 21 percent increase since the 2020-21 school year,” the report observes. “Given these middling results and the $89 billion New York School districts will spend this year—with $39 billion coming from the State budget—it is disappointing that education policy reform efforts have not focused on examining and rectifying New York’s unsatisfactory performance.” Instead, the education debate has “mostly centered on increasing State school aid even more and modestly shifting how dollars are allocated.”
New York’s political leaders continue to pump money into our public schools without regard for efficiency or effectiveness. If California has shown us how to fail at fire prevention, New York is the nation’s paragon of failing at educational improvement.
New York’s families have noticed. Enrollment in the state’s public school districts for grades K–12 fell by more than 320,000 students between 2014 and 2024. The drop-off is even worse in the earlier grades, with K-to-8 enrollment down 17 percent over the decade. Some of the decline is offset by enrollment growth in public charter schools, which grew by nearly 90,000 students in the same years. Yet the state legislature has capped charter school growth in New York City, home to almost 80 percent of the state’s charter school enrollment—even though charters receive less public funding than district schools, while their students score higher on state tests.
