For more than 30 years, the United States has been engaged in education reform efforts designed to dramatically boost student performance and close achievement gaps linked to poverty and ethnicity. Can schools afford those education ambitions? Most educators have their doubts. The author believes educators can improve student learning even when budgets are tight. It will require leadership, tenacity, talent, school reorganization, and strategic budgeting. It will be harder in places with less funding, but progress can be made in every district in the country. The broad political community must publicly back school boards that buck public pressure to use funds in popular but ineffective ways by setting clear achievement goals in core subjects and signalling that funds should first be used to maximize performance toward those goals. Without smart use of the education dollar, school systems will decline in quality and the goals of current education reforms will not be met, with students from poverty and minority backgrounds suffering the most.