The point, though, is that there is an incredible amount of bloat in the public system. Funding amounts themselves are not a primary problem, though perhaps allocation of funding is!
There are costs to operating a school district that have increased dramatically in the past 30 years (most significantly: employee benefits, special education compliance) and have not been met with comparable increases in funding. Additionally, we've dramatically raised the expectations we have for schools (holding schools accountable for "No Child Left Behind" and raising the rigor of instruction with the Common Core & new assessments).
From this vantage point, it seems clear to me that we need to either narrow the scope of what we ask schools to do or increase funding to meet additional burdens. And it'd be nice if we can improve operational efficiency while we do this...
http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-US.pd...
Non communal education means costs are spread out means they're higher. The government could bulk purchase, for example, notebooks, at pennies. Instead, students have to get packs of them at a couple bucks. I know this won't be the case for everyone here, but some of you reading this might have the thought, "a couple bucks, really? Just skip starbucks for a couple days!" I recommend you read "Evicted" and learn a bit more about poverty in America if you have these thoughts, or we can email and chat more about it.
In any case, yea, education costs more here for the same reason healthcare does - America is caught between forward-thinking longterm investors that know that a healthy, educated populace is good for the economy, and, well I don't know what shitty excuse the other side is using lately but they're about short term gains and spreading costs among private individuals rather than communising them.
