High spending on education is a a feature, not a bug. It buys the support of public teachers unions, which will support the reelection of politicians whose sole idea for school reform is "more money".
Another factoid that Cato likes to throw out is that public education spending has doubled on an inflation adjusted basis since the early '80s, yet scores on certain standardized tests have stayed constant. Still, listen to any presidential debate. Every candidate calls for more money for schools, more teachers, more computers, etc. It doesn't occur to them that the system is broken when scaling up the input produces no additional output.
Another factoid that Cato likes to throw out is that public education spending has doubled on an inflation adjusted basis since the early '80s, yet scores on certain standardized tests have stayed constant. Still, listen to any presidential debate. Every candidate calls for more money for schools, more teachers, more computers, etc. It doesn't occur to them that the system is broken when scaling up the input produces no additional output.
http://www.heritage.org/research/Education/images/b2179_char...