State lawmakers want to give New York City public schools about $1 billion more a year — even though students in states like Mississippi and Alabama have been notching dramatically better test results, while spending a fraction per pupil.
Proposals from State Sen. John Liu and Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon would restructure the formula by which the state feeds funds to the city Department of Education, boosting its $35.1 billion annual budget by $819 million, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office.
But more money doesn’t necessarily mean better results.
Three southern states, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, have historically had some of the country’s worst K-12 public schools, but have proven to be rising stars in recent years — despite spending less than half per student than New York, as was highlighted in a recent New York Times op-ed.
Mississippi spends about $12,500 per pupil each year, while New York spends more than twice that, about $32,000, according to Edunomics Lab, a Georgetown University research center. New York City spends more than the statewide average, around $42,200, per student each year.
Louisiana spends about $17,500 annually per pupil, and Alabama spends about $13,200 — both a far cry from what both the Empire State and the Big Apple are shelling out, researchers found.
But New York students have seen their scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — often called “The Nation’s Report Card” — drop by about 10 points since 2013.
Meanwhile, test scores in parts of Mississippi rose by 10 points over that same time frame, NAEP data shows.
Louisiana saw its 4th-grade reading scores climb by 5 points since 2013.
And while Alabama saw NAEP scores decline during that time, an adjusted analysis of national results from the Urban Institute that factors in demographics like poverty placed the state as the No. 1 scoring school system in the entire country.
New York, by contrast, landed at No. 32, and Massachusetts — typically ranked among the nation’s best public schools — came in at 21.
“It’s not about the amount of money,” said Manhattan Institute education expert Danyela Souza.
“If it was just about the money, our schools would be number one academically,” she told The Post.
Former deputy schools chancellor Eric Nadelstern agreed, saying the city’s public school system — the largest in the country — now has no “accountability.”
The institutions were given their own A through F gradings based on their performances under Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s watch — and some were closed because of poor performance.
But the accountability rating system was scrapped under his successor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, and never reinstated.
“How can you spend billions of dollars on education if you’re not holding educators accountable for the results — the teachers, the principals, the superintendents,” Nadelstern said.
“We don’t have a right to ask for more money until we hold people responsible for children’s education accountable for achievement,” he said. “We don’t do that now and haven’t for some time.”