because of "demographic factors, such as poverty, high crime neighborhoods, single parent or dysfunctional homes, homes where English is not spoken, or homes where parents offer little help with homework and motivation * * * * more spending on education is not necessarily the answer, and * * * the cure lies in eliminating the socio-economic conditions facing certain students" (295 2 at 16). This is partly an argument about why students fail, which we have rejected in the discussion of outputs. But it is also a distinctly constitutional argument in the sense that choosing between competing beneficial uses of funds is a legislative task. This is, in fact, the argument that Judge Simons made in his solitary dissent in CFE (86 2 at 342-343). Had we accepted the argument, we would have saved everyone considerable effort and expense by dismissing the case on the spot. We did not do so. Decisions about spending priorities are indeed the Legislature's province, but we have a duty to determine whether the State is providing students with the opportunity for a sound basic education. While it may be that a dollar spent on improving "dysfunctional homes" would go further than one spent on a decent education, we have no constitutional mandate to weigh these alternatives. And, again, we cannot accept the premise that children come to the New York City schools ineducable, unfit to learn. Comparative Spending. The State next argues that per- student expenditures in the New York City schools compare favorably with the average in the United States generally and in other large cities such as Los Angeles, a fact purportedly incompatible with finding "gross and glaring inadequacy" in education ( see Levittown, 57 NY2d at 48). The premise is that some expenditure level, if high enough relative to figures nationwide, simply must be "enough," without reference to student need, local costs, and the actual quality of inputs and outputs. This premise, also, is compatible with the interpretation of Levittown endorsed by the dissent in CFE (86 2 at 337-338) and apparently also today's dissent (at 12-13). We reject it for much the same reason we rejected exclusive reliance on nationally-normed tests -- the record discloses no information on whether those students are receiving a sound basic education. City Mismanagement. The State's most sustained arguments on causation, however, are based on evidence that the Board of Education mismanages New York City schools and the City itself fails to devote a sufficient part of its revenues to them. The State reasons that if either proposition is true, then the cause of any shortage of educational inputs in City schools is not the State funding system but City bureaucracy.