Anyone wondering how New York consistently has the nation’s highest public school spending but below-average student outcomes got a succinct explanation from Albany earlier this month.
In response to Gov. Hochul’s plan to spend a record amount on aid to local school districts, state lawmakers countered by calling for about a billion dollars more.
Assembly members and senators took exception with Hochul’s move to trim allocations in spite of decreased enrollment. Instead of cutting anyone’s aid – even in the state’s wealthiest downstate locales – the chamber’s Democratic conferences proposed giving every district, even shrinking ones, a minimum 3% aid increase. Because more is never enough.
New York’s public school system displaced New Jersey’s as the nation’s costliest in 2008-09, a title it’s since held continuously. In the most recent federal ranking, New York spent $26,571 per student — 85% more than the national average ($14,347) and nearly $3,000 more than the next state (Vermont).
Matching the total per-pupil outlay of neighboring Massachusetts ($20,376) would have saved New York taxpayers nearly $15 billion—and still tied New York for fourth-highest spender.
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and Vermont bested New York in all four categories of the 2022 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP, also known as the Nation’s Report Card).
Even Ohio and Illinois, spending just $14,613 and $18,316, respectively, beat or tied New York’s average scores in all four areas (Grade 4 and 8, math and reading). In the case of grade 4 NAEP subjects, New York came in below the national average in reading and had the nation’s fifth-worst average score for math.
This happened despite New York having the highest paid teachers and one of the lowest student-teacher ratios.
Instead of more state money, as lawmakers (in both parties) now propose, members of the Assembly and Senate need to determine why New York has, for over a decade, had the highest spending without anything close to the best results.
Lawmakers send money because that’s easier than confronting problems with the state education bureaucracy, its standardized test system or teacher tenure rules, just to name a few neglected subjects.
Ultimately, it’s up to the governor to make sure the budget is balanced. Hochul sees the significant gaps between revenues and expenses on New York’s fiscal horizon. Taxpayers need her to curb the unsustainable growth of school spending. And students need their lawmakers to focus instead on why the nation’s highest level of education spending couldn’t give them better results.
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