With a $2 billion accumulated surplus filling the state’s coffers this year, the calls for more spending on public schools in New York City and elsewhere across the state are reaching a fever pitch. Some are simply asking for more money. Others have suggested a trade of money in exchange for approval of an educational tax credit that, among other things, could be used for private school tuition.

Lingering in the backdrop, however, is the still unresolved Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision from March 2005 that ordered the state to find a way to deliver $15 billion in additional aid to New York City’s public schools. The controversial decision remains under appeal.

No matter what amount of money ends up being forked over this year and regardless of the back and forth horse-trading, it’s time that the state’s politicians stood up for children and insist that any additional funds for New York City public schools actually go to schools designed to succeed.

The bargain I suggest – call it “Pay for Success” – is comprised of two parts: first, a large increase in school spending (it’s inevitable anyway); and second, an ironclad legal requirement that this additional money be set aside only for public schools that have certain broad characteristics that all successful schools share. Under this proposed plan, public schools that are unwilling to adopt these characteristics would not get a dime of the extra money.

What are these common characteristics? Let’s start with the five most important: small school size, empowerment of school leaders, much more instructional time, the use of data to inform instruction, and flexibility.

Small Schools: Although much attention has been focused on small class size, the more important factor is small schools. Many urban schools are simply too large to give children the individual attention they need.

Empowerment of School Leaders: One of the reasons that schools fail is that their school leaders aren’t given the necessary authority to succeed. No leader, no matter how brilliant, can create a successful school if they cannot assemble their own team, make key budgetary and curricular decisions, and be able to reward success and punish failure.

Much More Instructional Time: No matter how inspired a principal and his faculty are, it is simply impossible in an urban setting to “leave no child behind” if the school day ends at 2:30 p.m. and the school year is limited to only 180 days (and even less when teacher prep days are deducted). No successful business would allow its staff to leave mid-day or would give employees three months vacation when the job isn’t getting done.

Use of Data to Inform Instruction: Our state assessment system is based on annual student testing. However, each year the state is measuring new classes of students in every grade without ever measuring the progress of those students over time. This arrangement fails to capture and use student data in a way that can most help improve student learning. A better approach – one that is being used by Brighter Choice Charter School and the other new public charter schools in Albany – is to assess students every six weeks. This allows these high performing schools to constantly readjust their teaching practices based on what is working and what is not.

Flexibility: At Brighter Choice, our motto is: “If it’s broke on Wednesday, fix it on Thursday.” We have a sense of urgency and a commitment to flexibility that drives our school to reinvent itself constantly in an eternal quest to do better. We have changed our school calendar, our class schedules, the relative emphasis given to different academic disciplines, how we teach reading, the way we instill our behavioral expectations, our staffing patterns, and on and on. In district schools, this flexibility is constrained by union contracts that can run hundreds of pages long and a mindset that every change needs to be discussed endlessly by all “stakeholders.”

A few years ago, the city added just 20 minutes to its school day schedule. It took more than a year and a half of negotiations to get a contract agreement and an additional two years to finalize how the 20 minutes would be allocated. Simply put, a system that moves that slowly and that modestly can never attain high levels of success.

Under the “Pay for Success” plan, a school would not receive any of the new funds unless it was organized in a way that allowed the principal and faculty to respond flexibly to the need for change. That doesn’t mean the school has to be non-union, but it does mean that a traditional work-rule bound contract won’t cut it.

The “Pay for Success” approach would ensure the extra money is well spent and, just as importantly, give a steep financial incentive for hidebound failing schools to look in the mirror and consider fundamental restructuring.

In the end, we can continue to subsidize failure, at a cost of condemning literally hundreds of thousands of students, or we can reward success and give those same students a brighter future.

Mr. Carroll is president of the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability based in Albany, N.Y.