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In fact, the U.S. has made vast investments in its public schools. According to a study by Manhattan Institute scholar Jay Greene, per-student spending on K-12 public education in the U.S. rocketed from $2,345 in the mid-1950s to $8,745 in 2002 (both figures in 2002 dollars). Per-pupil spending in many cities is lavish. In New York, huge funding increases dating to the late 1990s have pushed per-pupil spending to $19,000; across the river in Newark, state and federal aid has boosted per-pupil expenditures to above $20,000; and Washington, D.C., now spends more than $22,000 a year per student. Yet these urban school systems have shown little or no improvement. "Schools are not inadequately funded-they would not perform substantially better if they had more money," Greene observes.
Despite years of effort and gargantuan transfusions of money, the federal government lost its War on Poverty. "In 1968 . . . 13 percent of Americans were poor," wrote Charles Murray in his unstinting examination of antipoverty programs, Losing Ground. "Over the next 12 years, our expenditures on social welfare quadrupled. And in 1980, the percentage of poor Americans was-13 percent."
