...that our method of having so much education control be so localized, and yet at the same time with cities, counties, and states having some control too, is a big part of the problem. And I'd agree with that. But it goes deeper: far too many Americans no longer see education as a good in...
...and of itself, or as preparation for being part of our society, but simply as preparation for employment or, worse yet, an extension of the "culture wars", a way to impress their beliefs on other people's children or to use the power of the state to reinforce what they teach children at home.
Until we address this, changes to what level(s) of government make the decisions is not going to address our problems or improve our education system. And while more money would address a lot of problems in lower-income areas, it's not the cure for everything, and more federal money can just...
...(or "could just", to be fair) create opportunties for states and localities to cut spending. (Remember how lotteries were supposed to shower our schools with money?)
Is the spending including all the private schools? When you have entities that are there to make money and not JUST to make the pupils smarter and ready for the real life, things get more expensive. And don't compare EU and the US. EU is not a country.
The figures are public and private, but are for primary and secondary education (colleges/universities/trade schools exclulded). For grade schools/high schools in the US, private school spending can be disregarded since there are relatively few for-profit schools and they are more than offset...
...by private non-profit schools. Admittedly, some of these are very expensive, but those are in turn offset by relatively inexpensive religious (mainly Catholic) schools that spend less or roughly the same per capita than public schools do. And excluding private schools would likely further...
...reduce (or have no impact) on other countries' per capita expense, since some have more extensive private, non-religious systems that spend more per capita than the US does (e.g. the UK.) I think it is fair to include the EU as an example of non-centralized control since, while the EU is...
...not a federal state, the tendency over time (and especially since the Maastricht treaty) has been for "comptencies" (their term for "responsibilities") to migrate toward the Union level, or at least be more likely to be shared between the Union and the national governments. This simply hasn't...
...happened in education, except for more funding transfers from richer members to poorer members, roughly the same as "block grants" in the US system.