Record Spending, Record Failure: America's $1 Trillion Education Racket

By Carole Hornsby Haynes           September 10, 2026 

Results from the 2025 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) show American students are continuing to fall academically as the nation’s achievement gap widens.  The U.S. reading and math scores are at their lowest in nearly 25 years after a 14-point drop.Students ranked 27th in math and 13th in reading and science. 

The U.S. lags behind the Asian education systems that achieved the highest scores globally on PISA. Singapore ranks first in reading and the Chinese jurisdictions (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang) have the highest scores in science and math. 

(PISA is an international exam administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) every three years to 15-year-olds from countries across the world. The exam covers reading, math, and science.) 

U.S. per pupil spending for K-12 is about 38 percent higher than the average of other developed nations. Only a few nations, such as Luxembourg or Switzerland, spend more per pupil. 

With the school year 2023-2024, America passed the trillion dollar mark in public education spending. From a total revenue of $1.038,200,000 ($917 billion, state and local governments; $121.2 billion, federal government), current spending came to $1,014,000. Total revenue averaged $21,065 per student while current spending averaged $17,644. 

Let’s ask an obvious question. Where is that annual $1.014 trillion going?

Since 2018-2019, there has been a 1.4 million student decrease, largely driven by lower birth rates, shifts to homeschooling or private schools, and demographic migration. 

Instead of downsizing with the drop in student enrollment, school districts have added 479,000 employees with about 389,000 in non-teaching jobs. Teachers comprise approximately 47.5 percent while 52.5 percent are non-teaching positions. 

Thesenon-teaching personnel include administrators, district central office staff, classroom aides, guidance counselors, psychologists, special education and library media non-instructional aides, attendance officers, school counselors, school nurses, speech pathologists, audiologists, coaches, athletic advisers, athletic trainers, custodians, and security personnel. 

(Note how many non-teaching positions are in the health field.) 

In many other developed countries, social and structural services are provided by municipal government or separate public entities. For example, European children ride public buses to school. 

Let’s ask another obvious question. What is being taught in the classroom? 

Obviously not much academic learning is going on.  

The U.S. Congress can be blamed for some of that. (See “GOP’s ‘Christmas Miracle’ for President Obama”)  In 2015 the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was passed by a Republican Congress to supersede President Bush’s No Child Left Behind that left every child behind. If schools want federal dollars, they must comply with the requirements of ESSA. 

Under ESSA, the purpose of public education in America was forever changed. According to Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) Common Core mandate was redefined as social emotional learning (SEL), which would come first and academics would rank second!  (Except that Common Core was never a mandate!) 

Despite false claims by lawmakers to the contrary, the unconstitutional legislation of ESSA embeds the Common Core progressive philosophy as social emotional learning (SEL), now THE primary purpose of education in America and academic learning is in second place. 

Under the Obama administration, legislation expanded federal support and flexibility for school-based health programs. In Texas, mental health legislation took a front seat with Republicans driving the agenda over the protests of conservatives who understood the political game. (See “Drugging Kids for Profit”) Student mental health has become a big business for pharmaceutical companies, the psychiatric profession, and private psychiatric hospitals. (See “Why Are Texas Politicians Eager for School Mental Health Services”) 

With teachers using precious learning time on radical sex and leftwing ideology, students are mentally destabilized to the extent that America has a full-blown student mental health crisis. Under the guise of keeping students mentally and emotionally healthy, SEL lessons now are a priority in the classroom. SEL is, in fact, the vehicle for Marxist Critical Race Theory. (See “Texas Lawmakers Want More Mental Health Services in the Classroom”) 

For those who know the history of public education, this is no surprise. This was the long term goal of those who established public education in the 1830s. The original purpose was for the government to control what the child thinks and believes to insure future statism in America. Teacher colleges were established to train teachers in government approved views. 

Mission accomplished! 

From the little red one-room school house and home schooling, public education has become a big business, a very large big business. In many small towns, public education is often the main employer with numerous non-teaching positions and vendors who have contracts with the schools. 

Expensive education reforms over several decades have not reversed the downward spiral in academic achievement because public education is not broken. As explained above, public education is doing what it was designed to do. (See “Parents Taking Back Public Schools? It’s An Impossibility”) 

Unless changes are made quickly about how we educate our children, this nation will not survive as a free Constitutional Republic. Texas is leading the nation in making conservative changes to the curriculum. Even so, left-wing teachers and administrators, and even school boards, are controlling the local schools. Educators, who are trained in Marxist dominated colleges, bring that worldview to the classroom and teach students to become political activists. 

Not only are students being indoctrinated in socialism, but in political Islam. (Read “The Muslim Student Association is the Entry Point: Islamic Outreach is Spreading Through Your Child’s Public School”) and (“Muslims Only Room Exposed Inside Texas Public School”). Along with illegal aliens who hate America and will never assimilate, radicalized students will vote for the utopia of socialism.

Conclusion 

America is on the precipice of becoming either an Islamic Caliphate or a communist nation. Before it is too late, we must educate American students about these dangerous ideologies.   

The only choice for parents is non-government, ideology-free education for their children. There are great options, including parents-led homeschooling, homeschool co-ops and resource centers, private on-line academies, micro-schools, unschooling, parochial schools, independent private schools, and alternative pedagogical schools (such as Montessori or Waldorf).