What does that mean?
> an area of responsibility or authority
I mean, what is it that US schools are doing which schools in other countries aren't, which would produce significantly higher per student costs?
A few things off the top of my head that may be different (or maybe not!) but there could well be more.
OTOH lots of other places have far better school lunches and they’re free, but maybe those aren’t budgeted under the school but some other department. Lots of ways to get different outcomes with different accounting, without even doing anything plainly incorrect.
We actually had a natural experiment with this during COVID. Schools in Western Europe and Asia quickly got students back in the classroom. But in places like NYC, teachers refused to go back to work for a year or more.
What happens here particularly often is that insiders (in context of schools, these are teachers and their unions, administrators, consultants, etc) are able to sell more of their services to users, who don’t mind the cost, because it’s spread among non-users (taxpayers), and they have very ability to exercise control over the insiders.
The world is currently in a race to see who can make the most advanced microchips the fastest, and we're doing that because it's starting to look like whoever makes the best chips gets to call the shots.
There aren't enough people who grasp the fundamentals well enough to contribute to this effort. Education is now a critical national security concern.
The US school system’s remit is larger than any other nation’s.
Ever seen an article that breaks down costs between countries when education is discussed? I haven’t.