It's not just investing in education, it's using tools proven to work. WA spends a ton of money on education, and on reading Mississipi, the worst state for almost every metric, has beaten them. The difference? Mississipi went hard on supporting students and using phonics which are proven to work. WA still uses the hippie theory of guessing words from pictures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language) for learning how to read.