You didn’t even read my post, did you? Otherwise you’d see how I already addressed both the things you quoted above.

And that’s why I’m outta here.

The United States ranked the highest among the G-8 countries in terms of expenditure per student at the combined primary and secondary education levels as well as at the higher education level.

Spending on educational institutions in the United States as a percentage of GDP was at 7.4% in 2004, the second highest level among OECD countries. For the United States, educational expenditure has matched or exceeded growth in national income so that the percentage of expenditure relative to GDP has increased over the years from 6.6% in 1995 and 7.0% in 2000. This is not true of all OECD countries as one-third of the countries with available data saw expenditure as a proportion of GDP decline over this period

@ cGuy: think you could do that kind of analysis on the original post, too? I’m not the blogger here…

Also, America spends more per capita than Europe on education (except for Switzerland)….we’re second highest in the OECD.

Do you think we are getting the same bang for the buck?

Are you kidding me, Chris? Did you even read that report you linked to? Or did you just decide, once again, to cherry pick the one part from it that you think supports your view, while ignoring all the rest which debunk it.

for one, it’s not about tax spending by government. It’s about total spending by Americans. It states clearly that we pay more for higher education than just about everybody, but we also pay far less for primary and secondary school than the others, and were below the average. Which makes total sense, Chris, since we keep hearing in the news about how higher education costs are off the charts while our primary and secondary schools are struggling. And lo and behold, the report even says that only half of people getting into college are completing degrees. Seems there were plenty of news reports in recent years about students having to drop out because of rising tuition costs.

*sigh*

You’ll find a few nuggets which ostensibly support your views, but in fact show larger problems. For instance, despite high costs for education in the U.S., only half of that is paid to teachers in contrast to most other successful countries. The report also notes that although education spending has increased in the U.S. as more students enroll, those spending increases lag those of other countries seeing the same thing by more than 10%.

Then there are problems with the report itself. In only one place did it actually differentiate between primary and secondary education spending and higher education spending. Otherwise it kept all those figures together. It also did not differentiate between public and private institutions when figuring out spending for schools. Those are unbelievable oversights which render most of the data meaningless on anything but a macro level. When the report goes on to note that private funding of education is higher in the U.S. than anywhere else, it makes clear that this report is on a hell of a lot more than just our “tax dollars.”

Jesus Christ, and you guys think you’re a “small think tank.” Tell me, how many “small think tanks” pay their chairman over half a million dollars a year, eh? That sounds more like what you’d pay the head of a corporate-funded propaganda outfit.

Do you think we are getting the same bang for the buck?