When I hear someone advocating cutting education spending in the US citing the fact that spending on educators is the top cost, I just feel like the whole point is being missed. The highest cost at most companies is their employees - and it should be, if you want to attract high quality employees. Some people have chosen to conflate their grudge against a few of their primary school teachers with making our education system better, and it's been extraordinarily popular, with little gain in anything measurable. We do need accountability in education. But we also need to spend on it like it's a national defense priority. My wife is a teacher, and I didn't realize until she started watching how much of the classroom comes out of the teacher's pocket. And the tax credit that teachers get (and almost lost) is such a laughably low amount.