The New York Post recently ran a story about how the Empire State spends a whopping $36,200 per student on education, the highest in the nation.

With the ever-present mantra that more money is necessary to improve the schools, one would expect student outcomes for New York students to be among the highest in the nation.

Wrong. As it turns out, if you compare New York to other states using the National Assessment of Education Progress, New York’s test scores are middling to below average at best.

The Post continues:

Spending on education has gone up – to a whopping $89 billion on New York school districts this academic year – even as both enrollment and test scores have plummeted, according to the analysis by Citizens Budget Commission.

The statewide average of spending per student came to an eye -popping $36,293, a 21% increase since the 2020-21 school year, the report by the budget watchdog group found.

That’s even as the scores of New York schoolkids on the National Assessment of Educational Progress – the one common test taken by students from across the US – dipped further than the national average.

Continuing to shovel more and more money every year to school districts without fundamentally questioning this status quo behavior will not solve this problem, the CBC report said.

It is well past time for the state to improve student outcomes and ensure that schools’ vast resources meet the needs of students by improving oversight. What is working and not working must be identified. Interventions must be made to ensure districts are effective and innovative. And when school districts do not deliver results, they must be held accountable.

Teacher pay, retirement and health benefits have pushed spending to an eye-popping $89 billion.  In 2020-21, New York teachers had the highest average pay in the nation at $87,738. In 2024, the average teacher pay climbed to $92,696, second highest in the nation according to the National Education Association.

$36,293 per student? Money certainly hasn’t bought improved student outcomes — especially when most of the money goes to lavish teacher raises and gold-plated benefits. Money is certainly an important variable in student outcomes. But so too is how that money is distributed to school districts and how it is spent — or not spent.

The next time, policymakers are being asked to fund expensive new initiatives all of which promise to improve education, ask our friends in New York.