The Education Spending Paradox: Five Times the Money, Half the Literacy

This graph exposes education's complete inversion: as per-student spending increased from $3,000 to $15,000 (inflation-adjusted), reading proficiency collapsed from 75% to 21%. We spend five times more to achieve less than a third of the literacy. Every dollar added correlates with decreased capability. We're not investing in education; we're funding ignorance.

The money hasn't gone to teaching – it's gone to administration, technology, testing, and complexity. We've built an educational industrial complex that consumes resources while producing declining results. More money has meant more bureaucracy, more initiatives, more interventions, and less actual learning.

The spending increases; the literacy decreases; the pattern is perfect.