New York’s schools are failing our children.
A bombshell Citizens Budget Commission report exposes the rank insanity of New York spending on public schools: Combining federal, state and local outlays, it’s now up $36,293 per student, “the highest in the nation and nearly twice the national average.”
Even as “student performance is middle-of-the-pack”: By the Urban Institute’s calculations, adjusting for demographics, New York kids collectively place an average of 18th or 19th among the states on the gold-standard performance measure, the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
That per-student spending figure is a huge jump even from 2021, when it was $29,873. (That, by the way, is the basis for the “nearly twice the national average” finding: The CBC doesn’t yet have current national data.)
Why did it soar? Salary increases, pension costs and because the state has decided not to reduce aid to districts with declining enrollment, even as statewide public-school head count is down 7.7% since the 2012-13 school year.
Gov. Hochul had proposed declining-enrollment cuts in the state-aid formula, but the Legislature wouldn’t have it, so as usual she backed off.
So New York school districts are set to spend an eye-popping $89 billion (with $39 billion coming from state coffers) in the 2024-25 school year — up 21% from four years ago.
Thank the power of the state’s teachers unions, which go ballistic at any mention of education “cuts” and torpedo all efforts at accountability. They’d rather trap kids in failing classrooms that do anything to consolidate schools or insist on improvement.
They’re also choking the growth of charter schools, which mainly avoid unionization and deliver far more educational bang for the taxpayer buck.
In New York City, charters get less than half the per-pupil funding of the regular public schools, even as charter students do markedly better on state exams and other standardized tests.
Meanwhile, the Board of Regents and State Education Department, under the control of the unions and the Legislature’s progressives, are working to eliminate any meaningful standards for high-school graduation.
Every kid with a pulse will get a diploma, and the educrats will cheer the “excellence” they’ve achieved.
The special interests are robbing the public blind in the name of educating New York’s kids, and it’s getting rapidly worse: Again, per-student outlays are up 21% in just these last four years.
We’ve already called for the Trump’s Education Department to investigate the state’s bureaucracy, but it’s up to New York voters to hold Hochul and (especially) the Legislature to account: The folks in charge in Albany are exploiting the children to plunder the public.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
