Record school spending across U.S. fails to reverse decline in test scores

Just The News ^ | 12/28/2025 | Ester Wickham

[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.

[silverleaf]

The generation of children aborted would have been among those attending school

[Jonty30]

Yes, but the liberal tendency to be momentarily situated does not lead to principled positions.

[AndyJackson]

We reward poor performance so we get even worse performance, and we reward that too. Then people got in on the privatization charter school fraud where you could make even more money delivering poor performance.

[ClearCase_guy]

schools won’t improve until parents improve ...

Get rid of government schools. The GOP should push for School Choice. Allow parents to use money for private schools, parochial schools or homeschooling. THEN the schools will be as good as the parents want them to be. Bad parents will "save money" and send their children to bad schools. Good parents will send their children to good schools and those good schools will remove any bad children/bad parents from their student body.

Put parents in charge, not the government, and you will start to see some improvement.

[SharpRightTurn]

Imput: more money spent per student, output: dumber students.

This is not a workable model.

[drypowder]

Our public schools are failing the kids for the same reason those in DC are failing us. These days the school teacher’s mission focus is not on the children, it’s on making as much money as they can and being tenured. Just like the DC politicians, most of them are there to loot the public purse and to serve themselves, not the public. In both cases, it’s easier to pick the pockets of a sleeping person than it is to pick the pocket of a person who is awake and alert.

[Redmen4ever]

It’s not surprising that scores are lower when spending is higher. Spending is high because schools are run for the benefit of teachers, usually unionized and highly partisan left-wing teachers. Accordingly, the headline should be scores are lower BECAUSE OF higher spending, not IN SPITE OF higher spending.

[Da Coyote]

A school’s ranking is inversely proportional to the number of “eddikators” with “eddikashun” degrees. Lower that ranking even more as a function of the number of “eddikators” who are in the NEA. Multiply the school’s position by zero for each trans-”eddikator”.

[Presbyterian Reporter]

“””Imput: more money spent per student, output: dumber students.

This is not a workable model.””””

---

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

[Dilbert San Diego]

I think I know what you’re getting at.

It’s true. We are not allowed to mention certain things. We are not allowed to talk about certain issues with schools, such as disciplined problems.

We are not allowed to talk about kids who come from a culture which doesn’t value education, and how parents of those students do not value their education.

Instead, we talk about side issues such as an alleged lack of funding for schools, as being the root of these problems. It seems to be the default argument nowadays, that somehow we are shortchanging schools , and schools would do a better job if only we spent more money on them.

[blitz128]

What????
Are you telling me that spending on salaries, benefits, “fact” finding boondoggles don’t equate to rising educational performance😳😎

Nuts, solution tax more, spend more, tax more spend more…. For the bureaucracy er ah CHILDREN😎

[The Sentient Sheep]

In our Nation it is time to stop kidding ourselves and understand it is pointless spending money on students who don’t want to learn. Put our resources into the ones who want to learn do and scrape the rest off.

[ComputerGuy]

You are correct.

[DeplorablePaul]

Years ago I complained about the huge increase in education spending and the lack of improvement in achievement scores. One bright teacher replied that the kids were dumber than prior generations. Randi Weinstein has said as much as well.

[hal ogen]

The public schools are a waste of taxpayers’ money. Mainly, they are make work for “educators” and administrators who ae inadequate...at best.

What a pathetic joke on virtually everyone.

[DeplorablePaul]

Defund public education NOW!

We have to burn the village to save it.

[Tax-chick]

Unexpected!

*drink*

[ridesthemiles]

CORRECT

[nathanbedford]

Reading and math scores have deteriorated because leftist educrats have succeeded in divorcing performance from merit. Leftists do this to advance their goal of divorcing society from its traditional norms so they can substitute their own values and exercise power.

A society that feels insecure, or believes that it lives on the edge of scarcity, values merit as the determinative factor of prosperity, even survival. For example, a tribe constantly threatened by its neighbors values warrior prowess above all. Pre-Industrial Revolution agrarian society, perennially vulnerable to failed harvests, valued strength and endurance to provide the margin of subsistence. Silicon Valley culture, where survival comes only with besting the competition, values brainpower and inventiveness above all.

But a society that believes it enjoys nearly infinite abundance can value merit below other virtues. For example, a university such as Harvard with a huge endowment might well consider racial justice a more desirable goal than creating competent graduates of merit because it does not feel that the institutions well-being depends upon its reputation for producing quality education.

A secondary school establishment that in the old days regarded its mission was to prepare students with the necessary skills, such as math and reading, to participate and contribute in a competitive, even Hobbesian world, took its responsibilities to their students more seriously than a secondary school establishment that today simply assumes that the government will compensate for inadequacies in training and competence of their students. That threat being solved by government largess, secondary schools become able to concentrate on other values such as gender misidentification.

For society to move from insecurity to assumptions of affluence requires a context of prosperity or security that makes the assumption rational. For generations the American federal government has conditioned the people to expect the government to provide security and prosperity. Time and again Keynesian economics enables politicians to intervene with federal funds and spare citizens the pain of crises. In recent years we have QE1, QE2 QE 3 and QE on into infinity. It is assumed that the government will care for us, at least financially, when we are sick, aged or out of work, or simply want to change our sex.

Our government can do this because of a combination of factors: first and most important is our income tax that funnels vast amounts of money to the federal government and puts it in the hands of politicians who will spend it avoid pain; second, our near infinite ability to borrow to the extent of incurring trillions in debt, means that the government has had the funds to spare us pain; finally, America's final position as a dominant military power coupled with the fact that the dollar is the world's reserve currency, means that the government can continue to borrow, continue to spend and continue to shield its citizens from the consequences normally due to a society that fails merit tests.

In recent years we have seen the frightening consequences of detaching merit from performance in the United States military. The Trump/Hegseth campaign to restore the warrior mentality is a heroic effort to redress that imbalance. Similarly, the administration is attempting to restore merit as the critical value in our industry to redress the damage caused by DE I.

Educational establishment is but one institution among many that has gone astray, actually indulged its predilections, because they can.

[Bon of Babble]

The government will never learn that throwing good money after bad fixes anything, especially the education department.

You cannot buy IQ, motivation, interest or dedication from students. These days, you cannot get them off of a cell phone without them becoming violent. Teachers complain that AI are doing the assignments.

Complain and you are looked at as the problem, not being interesting enough, poor teacher, etc. It’s difficult to compete with the instant gratification of 24/7 social media.

Glad I got out when I did.