On Monday night, delegates of the 2024 Democratic National Convention voted to approve the Democrat Party’s 2024 national platform, with a stand-alone section dedicated to education policy: “Providing a World-Class Education in Every Zip Code.”
The title is ironic given that the platform opposes school choice, the one policy that allows students regardless of ZIP code to get the education they deserve. Opposition to school choice is not an isolated policy, however; the platform conflates public schools with all education and assumes that the only way to improve education in this country is to throw more funding at public schools rather than find different avenues that allow students, teachers, and communities to thrive.
“For too long,” the platform states, “we have short-changed our children by underinvesting in our nation’s public schools and in our higher education system.” One problem: There is no evidence suggesting that U.S. schools are in any way underfunded, despite the persistence of the myth that they are.
As of July 2024, per the Education Data Initiative, American schools spend an average of $17,280 per student per year, which amounts to $857.2 billion a year in total spending. For context, the average U.S. private school tuition in 2024 was just $12,832 per year.
If public schools are spending far more per student than private schools are, how can they be underfunded? If more funding were the answer, why would test scores have stayed flat or even dropped over the last two decades as inflation-adjusted spending has
