This was submitted to us by one of our readers who kindly gave us permission to post it.

So, here's my question (I'm going to refer to data contained in the 'Digest of Education Statistics, 2008' published by the U.S. Department of Education - if you want to look at all 702 pages, here's the link: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2009020):

Here's 46 years of pupil/teacher ratio history (which I'm using as a proxy for class size reduction), together with the attendant more than doubling of the number of teachers (this is K-12 only):

Over the last 36 years, here's what the U.S., on average, has spent per K-12 pupil - in constant dollars.  I believe some of this is due to the burdens society has placed on the K-12 system, the employment of more teachers per student (above) and improvements in pay for teachers and administrators.  Those of you closer to education will have more insightful comments than I on this topic.

And what do we have for student achievement scores over the periods in question?  Here is a look at reading and math (Click for larger image):

Over this 30 year period, looking at the data, I conclude that at the younger age groups, scores improved in both reading and math - more in math than in reading.  By the time we get students out the door (the 17 year olds) there is no difference over this 30+ year period.  I think one can say that the exceptions to that are Black and Hispanic students who seemed to show some improvement in this age group.  That might be due to improvements in other socio-economic measures for those groups over the last 30 years or maybe it was because of the increase in spending per pupil - we'll each have our own thoughts on that.

So, the question - in the face of almost no evidence that outcomes have changed over decades, why, as a society, are we continuing to say to ourselves that the answer is we just haven't spent enough?  Is there a tipping point some hundreds or thousands of more dollars per student per year in the future that will prove this out?  I know that merely asking this question will be perceived as 'education bashing' but it's not, at least not more than questioning how much we spend on defense or healthcare is defense bashing or healthcare bashing.  I think, as a citizenry, these are questions we should ask of our public institutions.