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Record school spending across U.S. fails to reverse decline in test scores
Just The News ^ | 12/28/2025 | Ester Wickham

Posted on 12/28/2025 4:52:36 AM PST by Adder

As national education spending per pupil rises, student enrollment is dropping and test scores across the United States are falling, which raises concern over how effectively taxpayer dollars are being used in public schools.

Since 2002, K-12 public school spending has increased by more than 35%, yet enrollment has dropped 2.1%, which is over a million students over the past five years. Student achievement has also declined, with only one-third of students nationwide scoring at or above the proficient level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading, according to the National Assessment Governing Board.

Currently, 40% of fourth graders are working below the NAEP basic level in reading, the highest percentage since 2002.

These declines continue despite record per-pupil spending. In 2024, New York leads as the highest per-pupil spending state, at $32,284. California is also among the highest, currently at $25,941. The lowest spending states include Utah, Idaho and Mississippi.

(Excerpt) Read more at justthenews.com ...


TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: budget; education; fraud; funding; publicschools; spending
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To: Reily

“They both pretty much hire from the same teaching pool - barely literate/trained teachers.”

Exactly. I knew a few lousy teachers in the 90’s from a public school that were all excited about working at the new charter school. The place was a zoo to say the least and even had a shooting.


61 posted on 12/28/2025 10:20:27 AM PST by CodeToad
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To: CodeToad
No. But it's possible that those who reject the decay will continue their ascent into the New Golden Age as the remainder descend deeper and deeper into decay and darkness and a two-tier social structure results, viz. a powerful, educated, sophisticated, wealthy upper class and a miserable, ignorant, filthy, impoverished lower class.

We may see its incipience in the rotting Democrat-controlled cities, where the homeless, filthy, drug-addicted, dirt poor have volunteered to be a lower class and a healthy, wealthy, educated upper class has soared into the stratosphere.

62 posted on 12/28/2025 10:31:10 AM PST by Savage Beast (When the student is ready, the teacher appears. When the people are ready, the hero appears.)
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To: Savage Beast

“and a two-tier social structure results”

Without a doubt that is happening. Lords and Serfs is now upon us. It is so easy to manipulate the stupid.

We will continue the bifurcation.

I suspect it will be within 5 years that people will no longer attend school, that somehow public paid educations will cease and that truancy laws will be abolished completely. The education system will loose its grip on the money, and that will end it.

Only the “nerds” will go to school. We are racing to the bottom and the elites want that and the people do not want civilized standards. They want hand to mouth feeding.

People love their socialism.


63 posted on 12/28/2025 10:42:56 AM PST by CodeToad
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To: CodeToad
The trick is to be in the upper class and figure out how to avoid something like the French or Russian Revolutions.

However, remember, it's the intelligent, truthful, and disciplined who are rising to the top and the stupid who are continuing their descent.

64 posted on 12/28/2025 10:49:03 AM PST by Savage Beast (When the student is ready, the teacher appears. When the people are ready, the hero appears.)
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To: Adder

Precisely why parents are flocking to alternate schooling - home, Catholic, Charter, magnet, private. Too much school tax funding goes to overhead, teacher’s unions and into liberal NGOs.
Funding issues aside, there’s truancy, bullying and the generally unsafe atmosphere, particularly in metro inner city public schools. (In the worst schools, the teachers themselves are at risk)


65 posted on 12/28/2025 11:06:12 AM PST by citizen (A transgender malel competing against women may be male, but he's no man.)
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To: nathanbedford
So so many people blame it all on the teachers. But, the problem is actually the parents. They sue the schools for many reasons, most of all because the school is "too difficult".

Keep blaming the wrong people if you want everything to stay the same of get worse.

66 posted on 12/28/2025 12:03:02 PM PST by GingisK
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To: Presbyterian Reporter

“But it is a workable model for a totalitarian who wants to have its citizens dependent upon its government programs.”

Sadly, that’s true.


67 posted on 12/28/2025 12:45:12 PM PST by SharpRightTurn (“Giving money & power to government is like giving whiskey & car keys to teenage boys” P.J. O'Rourke)
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To: Adder

Keep teaching DEI, and LGBT crappola, that should help reading and math scores..
Ya stoopids.


68 posted on 12/28/2025 2:18:12 PM PST by Joe Boucher (Kimber .45 Be Kind.)
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To: Adder

The ideologues who run public schools in America don’t give a damn about test scores because their primary purpose is hardcore leftist indoctrination of every student who enters their classroom. That alone is the measure of their success!
Parents who object must remove their children from that indoctrination.


69 posted on 12/28/2025 2:56:32 PM PST by fortes fortuna juvat (TDS: Insanity triggered in 2016 when the MAGA King killed the Queen of the Lunatic Left.)
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