Everyone always blames it on money. It's more complicated than that. My city (Washington, DC), spent $29,000 per pupil on public schools last year. By that m

Everyone always blames it on money. It's more complicated than that. My city (Washington, DC), spent $29,000 per pupil on public schools last year. By that metric, it's one of the best-funded school systems in the country. Test scores here are mediocre at best, to the point that most families with the means to do so move out to the suburbs once they have kids. There are a wide variety of reasons for this phenomenon, and they'll vary depending on who you ask (urban schools are generally expensive to run, special-needs students are disproportionately expensive to educate, teachers' unions have a lot of clout, etc.).