Pic of the day: The cost of K-12 ed vs student test scores

Keep in mind that these are inflation-adjusted numbers too:

The above comes from CATO via Instapundit: President: “We Need More Teachers.” Reality: “Yoohoo! I’m Right Over Here! Hellooo!”

This week, President Obama called for the hiring of 10,000 new teachers to beef up math and science achievement. Meanwhile, in America, Earth, Sol-System, public school employment has grown 10 times faster than enrollment for 40 years, while achievement at the end of high school has stagnated in math and declined in science ...

Either the president is badly misinformed about our education system or he thinks that promising to hire another 10,000 teachers union members is politically advantageous–in which case he would seem to be badly misinformed about the present political climate. ...

Here's their enrollment chart:

Houston, we have a problem. It would be interesting to see what chunk of the overall costs are being sucked up by pensions and healthcare benefits. Lastly, it's the typical liberal; solution to everything involving their own constituency - throw money at the problem.

UPDATE: From A Conservative Teacher: Graphs: Money Spend on Education vs Test Scores

There is something more disturbing to these charts than that- the fact that as the amount of money that is spent on education has been increasing test scores have remained flat could mean many different things- that the money being spent on education isn't finding its way to teachers, that the money spent on education has stopped or slowed the stupidity in our nation as parents abandon their responsibility to teach their own children, that the standards and cut scores for tests have been increasing while keeping the scores the same, that the tests themselves are increasingly poor measures of the education that students receive, etc.

Again I'll repeat my assertion that pensions need to go as that is adding to the cost. Some districts in Michigan are already strapped with 19% of their cost going to benefits that are inherently unsustainable. I'm a public employee and I have neither a pension nor healthcare after I retire. Many other public sector employees are the same. K-12 education needs to follow.

UPDATE #2: Related to A Conservative Teacher in the above update in regards to parents abandoning their responsibility is this piece by Bible, Math, politics and More: Warnings for Homeschoolers: Introduction. My wife and I have chosen to homeschool. I have to say it's the best decision we've made for our kids education, and neither of us have any formal training in elementary education.