Education funds drained by bureaucrats while kids fall behind

By Post Editorial Board | Commentary, New York Post

If you think spending more money on America’s schools will lead to greater student achievement, guess again: A new analysis of 12,000-plus school districts shows just the opposite.

Not only does more spending not correlate with better student performance, turns out it coincides with moderately worse performance.

The public-policy watchdog Open the Books looked at payroll growth at 12,531 public-school districts from 2019 to 2023, and compared it to the percentage change in the district rankings on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exams, the gold standard for measuring reading and math proficiency of fourth and eighth graders.

Guess what: The greater the payroll growth, the more ground districts lost.

The report sums it up: “Schools may hope that increasing their payroll will help their students outperform other states,” but “there is little evidence” to support that; indeed, “the opposite seems to be true.”

In the six states that boosted payrolls the most — by 23% or more — three were among the top five biggest proficiency losers; another was loser No. 6.

Only one, Utah, which raised spending 62%, showed a gain, and it was small (3%).

READ THE COMPLETE STORY AT THE NEW YORK POST

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