EXACTLY!!!

[Igel]

4. We can afford to educate our children.

All the increase in K-12 ed spending in the US hasn't done much good.

Some things, like smaller classroom size or early childhood intervention, make a difference, but that difference is often short-term or modest and only is seen for some populations. For others it's pretty meaningless. And there's a limit to what EC programs and smaller class size get you and the law of diminishing returns kicks in fairly quickly.

There are schools and districts where the level of spending is so low as to adversely impact the average student. That's not most of them. However because this is true somewhere it's very easy to scapegoat spending as the excuse everywhere.

Thing is, I don't think all the scapegoats are a luxury we can afford to have. It takes money to catch those goats (or raise our own), there's the quirky public ceremonies, and do you have any idea what a wilderness costs these days?