Forbes writer Louis Woodhill argues here that although politicians and educational leaders often speak about the supposedly great returns the country gets from all the money we “invest” in education (Woodhill insists on using language correctly and simply calls it “spending”) in fact we have gotten very little.

I think he’s right. The vast amount of government education spending has a) prolonged the time most people need to spend in formal education in order to become employable and b) left many students badly lacking in fundamental skills that nearly all Americans used to have when we spent much less.