California schools scored big on funding, but not on academics

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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Over the past few decades, there has been a recurring debate in political, academic and media circles about relatively low levels of academic achievement among Californians public school students.

For basic skills such as reading and mathematicsmeasured on state and federal tests, children in California generally performed below the norm relative to state standards and compared to other states.

Education institutions — school boards, administrators and unions — have repeatedly said California’s spending on schools is too low and that achievement would rise if they got more money.

There was some factual basis for the first claim. Compared to other states, per-pupil spending in California does lag; it was the second lowestjust ahead of Utah in 2010, according to Education Week’s calculations.

However, as EdSource, a journalism website devoted to California schools, notes, “In 2012, threatened with further cuts to education, the state’s voters approved a temporary income tax increase on the wealthiest Californians and renewed it in 2016.

The surtax currently generates about $10 billion a year, with schools claiming a hefty portion under the state constitution’s school funding mandate. Slowly but surely, school spending in California has increased compared to other states.

The most recent comparison, recently published by the Education Law Centersets state spending for California schools in the 2022-23 school year — the most recent data available — at $19,894 per student, 13^th the highest in the nation and $2,000 above the national average.

In 2019-20 Governor Gavin Newsom’s first budget it contained $58.8 billion for elementary, middle and high schools, and with local property taxes and federal funds, the total was $103 billion, or $17,423 per student.

Newsom’s latest proposed budget for fiscal year 2026-27 will spend $88.8 billion in state funds, and the total, with local and federal funds, will reach $149.1 billion, or $27,418 per student.

The latest numbers, by the way, exclude $5.6 billion in mandated state aid — or nearly $1,000 per student — that Newsom wants to keep to help narrow the gaping state budget deficit.

By any measure, California schools have seen a big increase in financial support in recent years, even though many local districts are under water — Sacramento United is a notable example — because of their tendency to overspend revenues, no matter how high they are.

The state’s schools are also seeing a steady erosion of enrollment due to a variety of demographic and economic factors, so the money they receive should further increase per-pupil resources.

If more money is the cure for California’s academic ills, why didn’t the $10,000 (57%) increase per student during Newsom’s governorship lead to an equally dramatic increase in academic achievement?

It’s possible that school officials, like those in Sacramento Unified, have been pressured by their unions to use most of the money for pay raises rather than quality improvements, such as adopting phonics-based lessons to improve reading.

Or it may be that money is not the critical factor in academic achievement as the educational establishment insists.

New York spends the most per student in the Education Law Center’s survey, at $29,440 per student, or $10,000 more than California. But in the latest testing by the feds National Assessment of Educational Progress conducted in 2024, only 31 percent of fourth graders in New York were proficient in reading, one point above the national average and two points above children in California.

Idaho ranks last in the Education Law Center’s per-pupil spending at $11,805, but 32 percent of fourth-graders are proficient, higher than California, New York and the nation overall.

Of course, it takes a fair amount of money to maintain a public school system. But we shouldn’t be fooled, or let politicians and school officials fool us, that spending more will automatically increase achievement.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.