Often, newly allocated money is eaten up by administrative bureaucracy and regulatory compliance before it ever gets to the classroom. Even the best of intentions do not get close to delivering better schools. There are some exceptions those that focus strictly on cutting red tape. Charter laws, for example, provide relief from many regulatory burdens. Many states also allow waivers from rules upon request, but only a fraction of administrators care to endure what is a bureaucratic process in and of itself.
Educational flexibility is a key to good schools and needs to be addressed by the states.
Schools need to be free to do their jobs. The problem is that the current bureaucracy was put in place by organizations whose very livelihood depends on keeping up that bureaucracy. Even if a state's governor with great support tries to cut back regulation, the blob continues to fight against such efforts to free the schools. For example, the California legislature actually released schools from bilingual education requirements recently, in an attempt to allow for some flexibility. The state's Department of Education, however, quickly wrote additional regulations destroying virtually all of the new flexibility for the program.