HP,
I’m willing to accept your third point that it may be true that as an enterprise grows, the level of waste increases. From your first point, it sounds like you’re willing to agree that it would be impossible for the level of waste to ever reach 100% - and, therefore, some (perhaps limited) improvement in education is indeed gained with extra funding.

It sounds like we’ve reached a true rarity in on-line political discussions - a consensus. Wow.

Private schools are excellent examples: they rarely have any organization beyond the school campus level, except possibly some light organization for Catholic schools. Public schools have vast bureaucracies that aren’t even on the school campus - it is hard to see how these add to the quality of teaching.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, my high school had as many office staff as teachers. My brother’s Catholic high school only had five non-teaching employees, and was about the same size. Also, my school had a vast district office, ironically filling a closed school campus that was converted into the district office.

I think there are three factors involved here. One is that there is some correlation between more money for education and a better education. Though the overall improvement may be small, more funding can improve individual schools that have been historically underfunded.

Second, the standardized tests may not measure all of the improvements. For example, if a school in the inner city decides to use some of that money for extracurricular activities, activities that may indeed help some kids stay out gangs and a life of crime, the standardized tests will not show that, though that money was certainly well spent.

Third, and I think this is the biggest factor, there is a point of diminishing returns, where every extra dollar spent gives you less and less return. Take your analogy above as an example, at lower levels of extra funding you would expect a rise in education. But what happens when the funding is double that? Triple that? At each increase in funding you would expect less education improvement. There is a point where, given the same number of students, a school has reached nearly all it could given its level of bureaucracy. I think we have reached that with our education system.

See here.

Springville Middle School gets $1 million dollars a year to spend on 1000 students. But they waste thirty percent of it through inefficiencies and bureaucracy. So each student gets $700 of “real” education during the year.

Meanwhile, the citizens of Milton City have voted to allocate twice as much - two million dollars - to their Middle School, which also has 1000 students. Milton Middle School also wastes thirty percent of their funding. So each Milton student gets $1400 worth of education during the year - twice as much as Springville students!

Conclusion: Yes, the waste is awful. But the most reasonable assumption is that the waste neither increases nor decreases proportionally as the funding varies. Which means that (all other factors being equal) increased funding will generally result in better education.

Foobarista,
Yes, more money will mean more waste. That’s a given. But assuming 100% of the extra money is not wasted (a fair assumption), then it seems reasonable to conclude that the education of the students will improve to some degree. Right?

Now, my assumption is that there exists some level of bureaucracy and waste in every private school. And I also believe (generally) that if I am willing to pay for a more expensive private school, my child will get a better education. I assume we are in agreement so far. Right?

Further, it is my belief that if the school has more money, the waste and bureaucracy will increase proportionally to the amount of increased funding. Are we still in agreement?

So…

Since bureaucracy and waste are proportionally constant, I see no reason why increased spending will not result in a better education (along with increased waste and bureaucracy). Right?

OK, so if increased spending works for a private school, why should it not work for a public school?

I need a better answer than I’ve heard so far.

Therefore, there’s little incentive for math and science graduates to consider teaching if they’re going to be paid the same as an english lit major who got an ed school certification.

I’m a fan of smashing the whole damn thing and voucherizing the system. Let schools sink or swim on their merits, and be shut down if they’re incompetently managed.