Part of this is in having schools bearing the brunt of other failures in society or by having schools be the ones trying to solve those issues.

Schools are often the safety net for youths with a wide range of problems. While schools are the catch all for such problems, they're more expensive than fixing other issues like fair wages for the parents of the students (e.g. having hischoolers needing to get a job to support the family rather than study for school).

This high price tag is the result of shifting around other issues to the place where they're inefficiently handled.

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The flip side of this is the "schools are often funded by property taxes and areas that are able to collect more taxes are able to spend significantly more per student even if it doesn't result in a better outcome." Many of these areas already have good student outcomes and the money is spent on on... whatever.

Palo Alto spends $24.5k/student ( https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/districtsearch/district_detail.asp?I... ).

Wyoming county schools spends $11.5k ( https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/districtsearch/district_detail.asp?S... ).

When looking at those, compare the breakdown of revenue sources.

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So, I'll say "no, we're not - but it's not the fault of the schools."