The $137 Billion Question: What Are California’s Schools Delivering?
With schools back in session and the state budget finalized, the question of what California spends on public education — and what it delivers in return — is at the forefront of many parents’ and taxpayers’ minds. California has among the highest per-pupil spending in the nation, but questions persist about whether California families are receiving the value they should expect from the billions of dollars spent every year on public education.
Passed just weeks ago, California’s 2025-26 budget allocates $137.6 billion in total funding for Transitional Kindergarten to 12th grade education. That’s more than the federal government’s budget for the Department of Homeland Security, which amounts to $122.5 billion for fiscal year 2025.
This price tag represents a 65 percent growth in education spending over the last ten years. California’s K-12 spending was $83.2 billion in 2015-16 (since then, Transitional Kindergarten has been fully implemented, so “K-12” is now “TK-12”). Adjusted for inflation, that 2015 figure would be roughly $110 billion in 2025 dollars, meaning education spending has increased significantly even when accounting for inflation.
One might wonder whether California has more public school students compared to a decade ago, considering the increasing costs. But in fact, the opposite is the case. Recent analysis by California Policy Center, which compared last year’s (2024-25) student population to a decade prior (2014-15), found that the public school population has seen an overall decrease. In 2014-15, there were about 6.2 million public school students in California. Last year, there were 5.8 million. Even though California implemented a new grade (TK) in that time span and saw significant growth in charter schools (over 182,000 students), it was not enough to keep overall public school enrollment steady.
In short: California is spending more to teach fewer students.
Dividing total spending by number of students yields an approximate per-pupil cost for California public schools, though variance exists between counties and districts. Ten years ago, California spent $12,284 per student on average. Last year, that figure was $23,000 — an 87 percent increase.
Have higher per-student expenditures led to the improvements in academic performance that parents and taxpayers would expect? While performance is up slightly from a decade ago, it has not increased proportionally to the state’s increase in spending. The most recent available data for the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (2023-24) shows that 47 percent of students met English Language Arts standards, and 35.5 percent met math standards. In 2014-15, the scores were 44 percent and 33 percent, respectively. Scores for the 2024-25 school year are expected this October (last year, we pointed out that Californians wait too long for vital data).
Comparing California to other states further sheds light on the spending-versus-performance problem. While Massachusetts spends slightly less per student ($21,885) than California, the state far outranked California last year on fourth and eighth grade reading and math. Even low-expenditure states like Idaho and Montana, with per-pupil spending of about $10,000 and $13,500 respectively, impressively outperformed California for both subjects in fourth and eighth grades. While these low-population states aren’t a perfect apples-to-apples comparison to California, they demonstrate that high spending is not a necessary prerequisite for better outcomes, and vice versa.
“Parents in California have long believed that more spending in their children’s classrooms will lead to higher academic results. Teachers unions have convinced many elected officials — from local school boards to the legislature — to believe this myth,” says Lance Christensen, Vice President of Education Policy at CPC.
Christensen continues: “But the data tell a different story. While money is helpful in educating our children, it’s important to have curricula that work, and to avoid the radical instruction that California families have had to put up with for too long.”
What California sorely needs is accountability in exchange for tax dollars, a renewed focus on academic fundamentals, the ability to fire poorly-performing teachers, more school choice options, merit-based policies in schools, and to divert money towards academics rather than the inflated bureaucracy. But the state’s powerful teachers unions oppose these reforms.
By informing teachers in your local school they can opt out of their radical unions, following the money in your local school board elections, and even choosing alternative education options like a free public charter school, you can take part in CPC’s mission to weaken the teachers unions, opening the door to meaningful reform.
Sheridan Karras is research manager and Parent Union Coordinator for California Policy Center.
