What does $1.7 billion get you in the Boston Public Schools? Abysmal student achievement and declining results.

                                                      

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Sponsored by The Boston Foundation The Best of CommonWealth Beacon OPINION Boston Public Schools headquarters in Roxbury.

What does $1.7 billion get you in the Boston Public Schools? Abysmal student achievement and declining results.   May 17, 2026 By Mary Tamer

Last month, the Boston Public Schools passed a record $1.7 billion budget for the next school year. The district annually spends $36,000 per student, one of the highest levels of per pupil expenditure in the country.

What do the data demonstrate we get from this extraordinary investment in public education?

Only 3 out of 10 Boston students across grades 3 through 8 can read or perform math on grade level. The superintendent and the mayor boast of an 81 percent graduation rate, but this is a notoriously poor measure of student achievement. Only 40 percent of 10th graders met expectations in reading and math, while less than a third of low-income sophomores and just 10 percent of 10th grade English learners were proficient in reading and math.

Despite statements from district leadership to the contrary, the “historic levels of investment” in the city’s schools are not leading to student success.

Even with a dramatic drop in enrollment that has resulted in smaller class sizes, we are spending more and achieving less, with outcomes worse than they were a decade ago. In fact, a majority of the district’s students are unable to read or do math at grade level.

Boston Public Schools is not spending its money wisely, and in doing so, is contributing to its students falling farther and farther behind. The problem isn’t what we’re spending, it is how we’re spending it.

Much of the proposed increase for next year will be siphoned off by central administration, while staff positions in actual schools will decline. Yet six members of the Boston City Council refused to vote in favor of a district audit, even after longtime School Committee chair Jeri Robinson called for one at a recent public meeting.

We spend 40 percent of the city’s increasingly strained budget on a system of education that is clearly failing its students. In that context, the Boston Public Schools often look more like a jobs and transportation program, with spending too far removed from its very reason for existence.

Boston often boasts of its proud history of being first — as home to the first public school, the first public high school, and the first public school system. The city promotes a belief that its schools exist to create a pathway for all children — regardless of background, income, race, or ability — to learn, grow, and thrive. If we still believe that schools are the great equalizer, expected to provide opportunities for every child, then outcomes should clearly matter. But district and city leaders too often deflect attention away from these basic measures of student success.

Especially concerning is how the decline in achievement has manifested in our most vulnerable student populations, which account for the lion’s share of the district’s student population. More than 80 percent of Black and brown students are not reading or performing math on grade level in grades 3 through 8. Only eight Black students in each of 3rd, 4th and 5th grade exceeded expectations in reading on the most recent MCAS.

For students with disabilities, the number rises to more than 90 percent not on grade level, with English learners similarly struggling. These numbers represent tens of thousands of children across our city who are not learning the skills they need for a successful, sustainable future, whether that means going to college, engaging in a trade, or becoming active citizens who can think and read critically before voting in elections. They deserve better from the adults who manage the system, and from the elected officials who fund it.

These poor outcomes, which have persisted year after year, should not be accepted as inevitable. We can change this trajectory, but doing so begins with embracing the key building blocks needed for that turnaround.

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