Cato Institute’s Andrew J. Coulson has constructed an interesting graph comparing trends in American public schooling dating back to 1970. By Coulson’s own admission, the chart does not encapsulate every variable, but it does reveal a startling disparity between increased costs and student achievement. Says Coulson, “Clearly, these data suggest that our educational productivity has collapsed: the inflation-adjusted cost of sending a student all the way through the K-12 system has almost tripled while test scores near the end of high-school remain largely unchanged. Put another way, per-pupil spending and achievement are not obviously correlated.” But the Left’s solution is always more money. More…