{"id":135174,"date":"2026-02-16T15:24:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T15:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/135174\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T15:24:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T15:24:12","slug":"to-improve-k-12-schools-track-educational-return-on-investment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/135174\/","title":{"rendered":"To Improve K\u201312 Schools, Track Educational Return on Investment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed into law a $79 billion<\/a> budget for the federal Department of Education, a $217 million increase over last year. That amount represents but a fraction of national K\u201312 education spending. K\u201312 expenditures consume more public funding<\/a> than any category of government spending outside major entitlements\u2014about $1 trillion nationally in 2023<\/a>. New York City alone budgeted $42.8 billion<\/a> for public schools this year.<\/p>\n

The cash infusion may come as a relief to many school districts, but it\u2019s cold comfort for countless American parents, whose children leave school unprepared for adult life. Despite how much we spend, American students\u2019 math and reading scores<\/a> are virtually unchanged from 2000 levels\u2014still well below proficiency\u2014while chronic absenteeism<\/a>, teacher attrition<\/a>, and grade inflation<\/a> have become routine.<\/p>\n

Finally, a reason to check your email.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our free newsletter today.<\/p>\n

We spend more every year, but researchers have yet to develop a good way to measure what taxpayers get for their money. Imagine assessing a company only by its operating expenses and ignoring its top and bottom lines\u2014investors would laugh. Per-pupil expenditures can tell what a system costs, but they say nothing about what it delivers. Outcomes without costs is another incomplete measure: two systems that produce similar results are not equally beneficial if one spends twice as much.<\/p>\n

In a new Manhattan Institute study<\/a>, I introduce an Educational Return on Investment (EROI) framework to address this. EROI combines financial inputs with concrete academic milestones\u2014high school graduation, college enrollment, and college completion. The goal is to help taxpayers and policymakers compare how different school systems translate dollars into achievement.<\/p>\n

The study tracks per-pupil expenses for students who attended New York high schools from 2013 through 2017. The results are disturbing, even shocking. The city spent on average nearly $400,000 (in 2025 dollars) per public school student over their primary and secondary years. But when K\u201312 spending is calculated per college enrollee and, more importantly, per eventual college graduate, costs skyrocket. To produce a single college graduate, New York City spent about $1.5 million from grades K\u201312, excluding postsecondary costs. For every low-income city student that completed college, New Yorkers spent $2.2 million.<\/p>\n

More cost-intensive special education students don\u2019t explain these exorbitant sums. Excluding special-education students, it still costs the public school system $1.2 million to produce a general-education college graduate.<\/p>\n

Similar patterns appeared across New York State, with or without New York City. Higher spending does not translate into higher achievement.<\/p>\n

By contrast, private schools serving similar populations in the same city produce better results at far lower costs. I know, because I was the president of one: Cristo Rey Brooklyn High School<\/a>\u2014part of the 41-school Cristo Rey Network<\/a>. The school serves overwhelmingly minority students of all faiths from families of limited means.<\/p>\n

Combining Cristo Rey\u2019s results with those of the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn\u2019s elementary schools (which many Cristo Rey students attended), we get an idea of what a reformed education system could look like. For roughly the same K\u201312 funding that New York City public schools spent to yield one low-income college graduate, the Brooklyn Diocese\/Cristo Rey model produced close to nine such graduates. Put another way, the private model accomplished for about $2.2 million in costs what the public system spent nearly $20 million to achieve.<\/p>\n

This sharp contrast between public and private education undermines the tendency of many to place blame for poor public school performance on inadequate funding. To be sure, while reform does not imply that we must defund the public school system, it does require that policymakers of all stripes stop equating spending with success, start measuring what works, and aggressively pursue genuine solutions.<\/p>\n

In his inaugural address<\/a>, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that many New Yorkers \u201chave been betrayed by the established order,\u201d and that rare moments arise to \u201ctransform and reinvent.\u201d No order is more established than New York\u2019s K\u201312 public school system, and no group more betrayed than its students.<\/p>\n

Transforming and reinventing public education should start by requiring EROI reporting alongside per-pupil spending, so that the public can see costs per graduate and per college degree. Recent years have witnessed several states giving families more options by allowing public dollars to follow students, not schools. Unlocking these possibilities in New York and other non-school-choice states would save taxpayer dollars and improve student performance, especially for low-income families.<\/p>\n

If Mayor Mamdani truly wants to improve New York City\u2019s affordability, he should recognize that the city\u2019s public schools spend far too much for the results they deliver. He has a genuine chance to transform public education\u2019s value proposition for the city\u2019s students and families. To do so, he must resist the temptation to keep throwing good money after bad.<\/p>\n

William Henson<\/a> is the president emeritus of Cristo Rey Brooklyn High School and a former senior investment banker.<\/p>\n

Photo: skynesher \/ E+ via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Donate<\/a><\/p>\n

City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed into law a $79 billion budget for the federal Department of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-135174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-manhattan","9":"tag-manhattan-headlines","10":"tag-manhattan-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}