Not sure what you mean by "best funded" but California spending is fairly middle-of-the-pack compared to all U.S. states. ~14k per pupil, compared to most North East states spending over 20k per pupil. [1]
But if you take these rankings at face value [2] it does seem there's more than spending at play here. Though perhaps spending simply has to be normalized against Cost of Living?
Im having trouble reconciling these numbers with with total spending in California. Does it include local and federal funding?
The California department of education puts[1] per pupil k-12 spending at 23K, almost double that listed in the census.
>The total overall funding (federal, state, and local) for all K–12 education programs is $124.3 billion, with per-pupil spending of $21,596 in 2021–22. For 2020–21, per-pupil funding increased from $16,881 in the 2020–21 Budget Act to $23,089 in the 2021–22 Budget Act.
There is a minimum state funding of $13,976, which is pretty close to the census numbers. There could also be a difference due to comparing the 2023 CA budget to 2019 census data, but a near doubling in 4 years seems pretty extreme.
Very interesting, I didn't realize there was a recent sharp increase in spending.
I think you're right, the census is out of date. However, given spending likely has a lagging effect, the historically low budget - coupled with harsh covid lockdowns - does begin to explain why CA ranks low among public schools.
Perhaps it is a cost disease issue with high cost of living driving up expense of mostly labor expensed fields with little automation fields like education?
