Adding more money to government-run K–12 education can sometimes work against meaningful reform. Increased funding typically grows the existing system: hiring more staff, expanding departments, and creating additional layers of bureaucracy.
More people come to rely on the status quo for their livelihood, which can reduce their willingness to support or even consider transformative changes.
It about doubled over half a century. For comparison inflation over that period was 410% or something like that. So idk, it's bigger than it was, it's hard to say whether it's bigger than it should be. I probably wouldn't describe it as dramatically as you have but that's often the case between us with public services I think.
Educational spending per pupil has gone up in real terms, by about 2.5x over 40 years. This is already inflation adjusted so there isn't any comparison to the inflation rate. I'd say a 2.5x increase is pretty dramatic!
I'm not "seeing" a neo-segregationist about school funding policy lol nice try though.
But anyway hasn't the GDP and accumulated wealth of the nation increased much more over that length of time? How much of that new wealth is it appropriate to spend on education?
It might be appropriate to spend a lot on education, if there were a benefit! But as you can see in the first chart, its not at all obvious that all this increased spending has had any measurable positive effect.
I also find there are benefits to spending (on my) education. But if we can't show benefit for a specific kind of public spending, is it justified to take other's money and spend it on "education" in a way which has no measurable impact? I don't think so.
Google "Inflation adjusted per-student spending in washington state schools over time" produces:
"since 2012, Washington state public school funding has increased 39 percent (adjusted for inflation), rising from $13,775 per student in 2012 to $19,163 per student in 2024, but the level of student learning has not improved."
More people come to rely on the status quo for their livelihood, which can reduce their willingness to support or even consider transformative changes.