>US schools have among the highest per-student funding in the world.
We actually looked at this in comparative econ, and I believe that the statistic is misleading, at least if it leads us to conclude that teacher quality should be higher in the US. You must correct for the alternative jobs available to the type of person who will become a teacher. In the US, since per capita income is higher, people who are deciding whether to become teachers or not will have to be offered higher salaries in order to do it because the alternative is more attractive, so the fact that per-student funding is higher in the US is actually the least we should expect, not some surprising statistic.
There are a few questions worth asking about this, though: Do those numbers include benefits? American teachers may get more of those than overseas teachers. And how skewed is that data by the very rich in America?
The US is "below trend" for per-student spending vs GDP, fit linearly. Not by a huge amount, but it might be wrong to go on about how generously American schools are funded.
That does depend on how the money is spent, though. Wages might be higher in places that are more developed, but it's not clear that materials should be more expensive there.
Some of US teachers' retirement and healthcare benefits would be unnecessary in countries with proper social systems, so I don't think they should be counted in comparisons.
We actually looked at this in comparative econ, and I believe that the statistic is misleading, at least if it leads us to conclude that teacher quality should be higher in the US. You must correct for the alternative jobs available to the type of person who will become a teacher. In the US, since per capita income is higher, people who are deciding whether to become teachers or not will have to be offered higher salaries in order to do it because the alternative is more attractive, so the fact that per-student funding is higher in the US is actually the least we should expect, not some surprising statistic.