New York’s leaders are stuck in an unwinnable battle, doubling down on past failures in the hope things will magically improve. Despite dwindling public-school enrollments driven by families leaving the state, the Board of Regents proposes increasing state education aid by $3.4 billion, or almost 11% percent, over this year’s already-bloated amount.

The state has followed the strategy of spending more on schools — with little improvement to show for it — for more than 20 years. Total school spending more than tripled between 1995 and 2020. State education aid itself grew by $11 billion between 2013 and 2022, while enrollment dropped by more than 300,000 students. Per-pupil spending on instructional salary and benefits, thought of as “money in the classroom,” was more than double the national average and greater than total spending per pupil in all but six other states and the District of Columbia.

All this would be justified if New York student performance had improved as spending increased or if the state led the nation in student achievement to match its spending. Neither is true.

On each of the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ four main tests, New York’s pre-pandemic 2019 scores were mostly unchanged from the early 2000s, then dropped more than the national averages in 2022 in three measures. Throughout those years, New York never came close to the top of the 50-state ranking, scoring around the national average.

So the New York education “model” has had a clear and consistent result — the highest spending in the nation for average results. Increases to that spending led to stagnant performance, followed by the huge COVID-era drop-off. This track record does not incentivize families to reach deeper into their pockets for increased spending; instead, many of them are fleeing the state.

While the Legislature has been happy to oblige the Regents’ annual requests for more spending, it has undermined laws that have improved students’ educational outcomes. Charter schools outperformed district schools on the latest English language arts and mathematics exams by 12 percentage points. The charter advantage was even greater for black students: Those in charter schools outperformed those in district schools by 22 points in ELA and 32 points in math. Yet the Legislature stubbornly refuses to raise the cap on charter schools in New York City, where these schools, tremendously popular with parents, have long waitlists.

The city saw a very successful overhaul of public high schools and the expansion of school choice in charter and new public schools during the Bloomberg mayoralty. But bowing to demands from the powerful teachers union, the Legislature has steadily weakened the direct mayoral control so critical to those improvements.

Albany moderates and Gov. Kathy Hochul should embrace reforms with a greater chance of improving outcomes for students while rejecting continued school-spending hikes. The state should eliminate the charter-school cap and enact a program diverting some portion of state education aid to educational savings accounts, which families can use to place their children in schools of their choice, including private and religious ones.

To the Regents’ credit, they’re working on two issues deserving support. For more than 20 years, the state’s proficiency and graduation standards have pointed to the single goal of college preparedness. This has always been unrealistic, and elected officials should support re-establishing a two-tiered high-school-diploma system, recognizing that while many students will benefit from higher education, others want to pursue direct entry to the workforce, the creative arts or any number of other opportunities after high school.

That two-track system can only work if the Regents require school districts and community colleges to offer short-term certification programs aligned with industry standards in various trade and technology fields. Giving students training to take on decent-paying jobs post-graduation can give them the strong start they need for a self-sufficient life while still holding open the possibility of a return to higher education, if desired, later.

Our state’s schools have been losing students for more than a decade. It’s time for New York’s leadership to stop throwing money at the problem and instead think creatively about new approaches.

Ray Domanico is director of education policy at the Manhattan Institute. Adapted from “The Next New York: Renewing and Reforming the Empire State,” a project of the Empire Center at NextNewYork.net.