Just in Time
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Just in time for Judge Leland De-Grasse’s decision on how many billions of additional dollars he will force the long-suffering taxpayers of New York to allocate to public schools comes a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Paris-based OECD yesterday released a 471-page report called “Learning for Tomorrow’s World” that is based on a two-hour test taken by more than 250,000 students in 41 countries as part of the organization’s Program for International Student Assessment.
This careful, international, nonpartisan study came up with some findings that run counter to the notions of Judge DeGrasse, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, and the rest of those preparing to shower additional taxpayer funds on New York’s public schools. Does more money mean better schools? Reports the OECD, “Spending per student between the ages of six and 15 years in the Czech Republic is roughly one-third of, and in Korea roughly one half of, spending levels in the United States, but while both the Czech Republic and Korea are among the top ten performers in PISA, the United States performs below the OECD average.”
Is current educational spending in America efficient? Reports the OECD, “Spain and the United States perform almost equally well, but while the United States spends roughly $80,000 per student between the ages of six and 15 years, in Spain this figure is merely $47,000.”
Couldn’t additional money be used to decrease class size in New York and get better results? The OECD reports that it “does not detect a statistically significant relationship between student/teaching staff ratios and student performance.”
What about using additional money in New York to break up big schools and create smaller schools where students won’t get lost in the crowds? Reports the OECD, “school size tends to be positively related to school performance, all other things equal. Each 100 additional students are associated with an advantage of 5 score points.”
Finally, some news from Paris for which intelligent New Yorkers can be thankful. Here’s hoping Judge DeGrasse, and the rest of the state’s education policy-makers, have a careful look.