 The underfunding of schools in Los Angeles, California. South Mississippi. In Minnesota. North Carolina. Missouri. Washington, D.C. The underfunding of schools in New Mexico is devastating to our children. I don't know about you, but when I hear the phrase, the underfunding of school, my head and my wallet explode. Tax revenue per student in public K-12 schools is up 24% nationally over the past two decades, and that takes inflation into account. In New York, where I live, real per pupil revenue has increased by a mind-boggling 68% over that same period. The public schools here are now shelling out more than $30,000 per kid, or more than double the national average. And that doesn't even include the $16 billion extra that New York's system got in federal and state funding for COVID-19 relief. Yet New York's public schools are still as terrible as the Mets, the Jets and the Giants, with only a third or fewer of students up to grade level in eighth grade reading and math, according to their scores on a nationwide test that's the gold standard for measuring performance. $30,000 a year puts the lie to the argument, pushed by unions and progressive advocates that more money will fix schools. More money hasn't helped the rest of the country boost their scores either. None of this is a mystery. The connection between bigger spending and better outcomes is weak at best and nonexistent at worst. Certainly the new money in New York hasn't gone to fundamentally reform what gets taught or how or under what circumstances. According to a report by my colleagues at the Reason Foundation, teacher compensation is way up in New York, especially when it comes to health insurance and pensions, which have grown by 147%. Nationwide, a dozen states increased spending on teachers' benefits by over 100%, and only three states kept the increase below 10%. Costs for things like administration, support staff and transportation are up 24%. Dumping more money into a broken system is like trying to fix a leaky pipe by pouring more water into it. What needs to happen is a revolution in how education is conceived and delivered. Over the past 20 years, New York has allowed publicly funded charter schools, which must attract and keep students in order to stay in business. The best charters have wait lists even though they get less money than traditional public schools. But like most places, New York caps the number of charters and it doesn't even allow education savings accounts, tax credit scholarships and vouchers that would allow more families to escape traditional public schools. Increasing the amount and variety of school choice, though, is exactly what New York and the country need to be doing. We're not going to seriously improve educational outcomes for our kids if we don't fundamentally change how we educate them. When you look back 20 years, virtually every other service in our lives from coffee drinks to media to medicine has gone through multiple revolutions. Everything is more geared toward the individual. It's more responsive and not just cheaper in real terms, but better too. K-12 education is still basically the same as it was when today's parents were in school. The only difference is the price tag, which just keeps going up and up.