Education bureaucracies are inefficient and wasteful. Too many paper pushers adding no value to the students in the classroom.
I once worked for a company that went through a value engineering process where activities that added value to the customer were identified and activities that added no value to the customer were identified. It was amazing the % of total cost that related to non-value added activity. The company then reengineered its processes to eliminate non value added activity. Costs and inventory declined, customer service improved, product quality improved, manufacturing throughput times were reduced and manufacturing capacity increased without any capital investment. Some downsizing occurred but many people in non-value added functions were reassigned to value enhancing activities. The company grew rapidly for the next four years until a new CEO came in with a new executive team, scrapped the lean processes, and built a new bureaucracy.
The US education system needs a complete purging and restructuring to eliminate bloated overhead structures and focus on the education of the children in the system. The child in a one room rural schoolhouse at the beginning of the 20th century, with a single instructor responsible for teaching multiple grades, had a better understanding of math, reading, writing, civics, and basic science than the average graduate of an urban high school today. The $300,000 per year superintendent of schools and his staff do not educate anyone.
Also the value of the dollar has been destroyed to the point that public schools spend, per student in one year, an amount that exceeds the PROJECTED lifetime earnings at birth for many who are still alive today. The inflation adjustment figures the government puts out now are laughable.