Funding is not the silver bullet to a better education system that many would like it to be. Misguided reliance on systemstic top-down reform, conflicting interests of education providers and their agents, and the immovable inertia of traditional institutions are far greater enemies to the unrealized potential of new educational paradigms. Among the multiple dimensions of human experience that technology is currently disrupting and reinventing, education should be at the forefront. Instead it is held hostage by the special interests of the current education system, which are reinforced by their entrenchment within the state. Much must change before a new system can be realized.

The problem is not that we aren't buying enough education; it's that we're being sold a counterfeit.

That's simply not true. Per student spending in the US is among the highest in the world.

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp

We just blow it on administration-heavy bureaucracies and demonstrably failed methods.

>>We just blow it on administration-heavy bureaucracies and demonstrably failed methods.

Not to mention sports. The absurd amounts of money, attention and time poured into college athletics especially never ceases to amaze me. Even at the high school level, many students focus way too much on being "discovered" by talent scouts so that they can get scholarships to colleges they want - grades be damned.

I would refine this to say that teaching is not sufficiently respected as a profession. A large part of this is the low pay. Another part is the top-heavy bureaucracy, and that we take our best teachers and push them out of teaching because administrators are the only ones making decent money.

Other posters have pointed out that there's plenty of spending in schools, but it is in frivolous activities on the periphery of education. They did not mention facilities, which I believe is another huge point of financial irresponsibility when it comes to how municipalities fund their schools. Any town pointing to a dilapidated school as proof of need for a new one is among the least likely to be a good steward of that school, given that it is deferred improvements and maintenance, not age, that really causes problems (to a point, of course). Worse yet, they move these schools to huge complexes on the edge of town so that no one can reach it without a car or bus. Then they get to spend more good school money on buses.