In our recent comparison of New York and Florida, written in response to left-wing Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s strange trolling of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, we briefly touched on how the Sunshine State is eating the Empire State’s lunch on education. Florida isn’t alone in this respect.Much has been made of the extraordinary “Mississippi Miracle” in the Deep South, and for very good reason. Meanwhile, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos offered the following assessment of the Big Apple’s government-run school system: “If we ran Amazon the way New York City runs their school system, packages would take six weeks to arrive, we’d charge you a $100 delivery fee and when the package did finally arrive, it would have the wrong item.”Ouch.
Mamdani may have to toggle away from offering specious “rebuttals” to long-deceased conservative leaders and return to his bread and butter: railing against and alienating successful people.The mayor can fume, but Bezos isn’t wrong. Bethany Mandel highlights the achievement gaps separating New York and Texas in education, writing, “NYC spends roughly $43 billion a year to educate about 850,000 students, putting the rest of the country’s spending to shame: That’s over $44,000 per child per year. The result of that astronomical figure? Two-thirds of fourth graders can’t do math properly, and nearly three-quarters can’t read at grade level. Along with poor academic outcomes, those billions are buying increasingly unsafe schools: Student assaults are rising even as city schools suspend fewer students.”New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks about the fiscal year 2027 budget in New York City on May 12, 2026. (Tmothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images)
