Ben Stein’s economics teacher in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” asked his class, “Anyone? Anyone?” and got silence. Forty years later, I’d like an answer to a similar question, and the tab has grown. Public schools spent a record $17,619 per student in fiscal 2024, before adjusting for inflation. The seniors tested that year posted the lowest reading and math scores the Nation’s Report Card has ever reported for their grade.

I’m a father of three sons and a longtime youth sports coach. I’ve learned to read a scoreboard. This one shows spending climbing and results sinking, while the largest teachers’ unions spent the decade on politics. A pattern isn’t proof of cause, so I’ll lay out the evidence and let you grade it.

Begin with the scores. Fourth and eighth graders read about as well as they did in the early 1990s, and that slide began before the pandemic. Among seniors, 45 percent fell below the basic level in math and 32 percent in reading, the largest shares ever recorded. Eighth grade math fell 8 points between 2019 and 2024, and no state posted a gain.

Money didn’t fix it. A Texas A and M research center found that inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending rose 20.4 percent between 2003 and 2022. In 36 states, spending went up while eighth-grade math and reading scores both finished below their 2003 marks. Six states improved in both subjects. State comparisons can’t prove cause, but they make the “just add dollars” theory hard to defend.

So where did the dollars go? EdChoice economist Ben Scafidi found that from 1950 to 2009, enrollment grew 96 percent while full-time school employees grew 386 percent. He later reported that........

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