Washington DC public schools get more money per student than anywhere else in US.
My son's private school tuition is half what the average public school system in the US gets from taxpayers (local, state, and federal combined).
The spending efficiency of public schools in US is horrible, and they tend to focus on quantity over quality with teachers, due to a misguided idea of reducing student teacher ratios that Malcolm Gladwell has written about.
This constant excuse repeated everywhere about not enough funding isn't backed up by data.
I spent my entire childhood in public schools. 3/4 of my teachers were lazy shitbags who treated it like a govt job. The other 1/4 were punished every time they broke the mold in any way to fix things.
The day public schools realize that their primary role is educating kids OVER providing jobs to as many teachers union members as possible, we can start fixing them.