Let families control what LAUSD spends on each child

With round one over and a runoff looming, LA’s mayoral race will keep dominating news nationwide—including where I live, in Pennsylvania.

But you don’t have to be an Angeleno to offer ideas for the city’s future.

As Karen Bass and (probably) Spencer Pratt prepare to face off in November, I have a proposal about how to make LA better.

It’s simple: Give families more control of the money the city spends on their children.

Let me walk you through the math. 

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) enrolls roughly half a million students with a budget approaching $19 billion. LAUSD received $34,533 per student in revenue in 2023, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

For a child who spends 13 years in the system, taxpayers are committing nearly $450,000 before graduation. That means an LA mom with two children is basically a millionaire. And your next mayor should give her her money.

Right now, your politicians are taking it from her, and blowing it.

Los Angeles fourth-graders scored below the large-city average in math, as only 27% reached proficient on the 2024 Nation’s Report Card. In eighth-grade math, only 18% of Los Angeles students were proficient, while eighth-grade reading proficiency fell to 22%.

That is, around four of every five students cannot read or do math at grade level.

Those numbers represent children, not abstractions. They represent students who will be asked to compete in a city where rent, college tuition and entry-level job requirements keep rising.

So here is a Los Angeles affordability plan: Give families direct control over how their education dollars are spent.

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Suppose LAUSD families received half of the current per-pupil revenue — about $17,300 per child per year — in an education scholarship account usable at any accredited public, charter, private, microschool, tutoring program or approved educational provider.

The other half could be deposited in a universal savings account, invested conservatively and reserved for college, trade school, apprenticeships, starting up a business or a first-home down payment after graduation.

At a modest 2 percent annual return, that child would graduate with approximately $260,000 in their account. For two children, that is about half a million dollars in family-controlled education wealth — on top of the educational choice they were afforded.

Once we look at how much is spent per child for K-12 education, it highlights how much opportunity, and wealth, is wasted on schools that don’t work for our kids. Empowering parents with control over nearly one million dollars in lifetime education spending would exponentially improve the lives of Los Angeles families.

Critics will say this would “defund” public schools. But the public’s obligation is to educate children, not to preserve any particular bureaucracy.

If a school is serving students well, families will choose it. If it is not, families should not be trapped there because adults find the current arrangement politically convenient.

LA families with means already exercise school choice. Wealthier parents buy homes near preferred schools, pay private tuition, hire tutors, or move. Poor and working-class parents are left behind.

That is not equity. That is rationing by ZIP code.

The moral question is simple: Who should be trusted with more control over a child’s future—the family raising that child or a district monopoly that spends more than $34,000 per pupil while most students can’t read or do math properly?

The economic question is just as simple: School choice is the best return on investment around. Academic studies overwhelming show school choice benefits participants’ test scores, educational attainment, public schools, civic values, integration and taxpayers. The science is settled.

School choice puts the poor in control of their destiny. It plants the seeds of economic prosperity.

No matter who’s elected mayor in November, Los Angeles can solve its education and affordability crises. All the next mayor needs to do is give families the power to direct the public dollars already attached to their children toward schools that teach them to read, do math, graduate prepared and build a future in the city they call home.

Jeff Yass is managing director and a co-founder of Susquehanna International Group. He lives in Philadelphia.