If you wonder why people in New York City seem to have a terribly warped view of reality, look no farther than the New York Times. The Times is where all the seemingly well-educated and sophisticated upper income New Yorkers get their “news.”
Consider, for example, the question of education funding for PreK-12 schools. If you know anything about that subject, even if you don’t know any details, you know that the New York City public schools are far and away the most lavishly funded in the country. How they can spend so much money and fail to achieve even mediocre results for the students is a shame and a disgrace. Of course, the New York Times has an entirely different take.
So let’s compare the New York Times’s view of New York City education funding with some reality.
First, to the Times. The Times has a substantial piece on the subject today, around 1500 words, with the headline (print edition) “Fiscal Cliff Threatens a Raft of Education Plans,” and subheadline “Risk of ‘Massive Setback’ For New York Schools.” The online version has an even scarier subheadline: “The city faces billions in financial pressures in the coming years that threaten to worsen inequality across the nation’s largest school system.” The byline is Troy Closson.
A few sentences into the piece, we are told of the dire financial situation the City’s public schools are facing:
[T]he system is barreling toward a steep new challenge: a huge fiscal cliff that could reduce the education budget by hundreds of millions of dollars.
So a “huge fiscal cliff” is coming, involving “hundreds of millions of dollars.” Well, is that a lot or a little in the overall picture? You won’t find the answer here. Indeed, beyond one vague line that “New York invests more in its students than other large cities,” you won’t find here any of the important information that you would want to know for an informed consideration of the subject matter. For example, in the entire long piece, they never mention the overall size of the City’s education budget, the number of students, the per student spending level, or how the spending compares quantitatively with other cities. Instead what we get is one after another dire warning about the terrible effects of cutting the level of education spending by even a penny.
From a “coalition of more than 150 civil rights groups and youth organizations including Advocates for Children of New York”:
[The City is at] “at a critical juncture,” and could see a “massive setback to public education” . . . . “The stakes are enormous,” said Randi Levine, the organization’s policy director. “We’re always concerned that programs serving students from marginalized communities are the last to be funded — and the first to be cut.”
From unnamed “budget watchdogs”:
The trade-offs illustrate the risk for school officials, budget watchdogs said. It has grown ever more important to convince families who remain in the public school system of the value of district schools.
From schools Chancellor David Banks:
“We don’t want to have to cut anything,” said the schools chancellor, David C. Banks, while adding that “some wonderful programs” were “potentially on the chopping block.”
And then there’s the perennial complaint that parents in affluent districts provide funds for a PTA, which parents in less affluent districts don’t:
In the coming years, school budget debates will probably place a fresh spotlight on disparities between parent-teacher associations, experts said. More than $13 million in annual funds raised separates the city’s wealthiest and highest-poverty districts, data shows, dollars that could go toward restoring art and music teachers, after-school programs or tutoring services.
I guess the taxpayers will need to make up that shortfall too. So by now are you convinced that the New York City public schools need every cent of their current funding and more?
OK then, here’s some reality.
An August 5 piece in the New York Post came up with the most recent enrollment figure that I can find for the New York City public schools: “Total 3K-12th grade enrollment is now at 859,124.” Trends for the years since 2016 (when enrollment peaked) can be found in this April 11, 2023 Report from the Citizen’s Budget Commission:
Between fiscal years 2016 and 2022, DOE spending grew 32.5 percent, or 4.8 percent annually . . . . Between school years 2015-16 and 2021-22, K-12 DOE enrollment declined by more than 141,000 students. . . . Simultaneous spending increases and enrollment declines led to rapid increases in per-student spending. In fiscal year 2022, the DOE spent more than $37,000 per K-12 DOE student—up 15.2 percent from the prior year and 46.9 percent since fiscal year 2016.
Those are rather incredible figures. And we can update them somewhat. The Education Department itself gives its budget for the 2023-24 school year as $37.5 billion. Dividing by the Post’s latest enrollment figure of 859,124 gives per student spending of $43,649.
An organization called EducationData.org gives average U.S. public school K-12 spending as $16,080, with an “last update” date of September 8, 2023.
Granted, there could be some issues as to whether EducationalData’s $16,080 for the full U.S. and the $43,649 of New York City are fully comparable. For example, there could be differences in how charter schools are counted, or whether teacher pension costs count in per student spending. But in the overall picture, those are small issues. Any way you measure it, New York City spends more than two and a half times per student as the U.S. average — and achieves sub-par results in terms of student scores on standardized tests.
How the New York Times can look at this and think that its job is to defend every last nickel of existing spending is beyond me. The New York taxpayers should rightfully be up in arms. But as long as they get their news from the New York Times, complacency will continue to reign.
A separate question is how the New York Times comes to run pieces like this on a regular basis. My inference is that the pieces get spoon-fed to the reporters by various activist groups, most particularly the teachers union, and the reporters just hand them in without ever doing any critical thinking.
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