In their NRO piece today, Chester Finn and Mike Petrilli hit the nail on the head, writing that our education system “doesn’t need ‘more investments,’ it needs more efficiency and greater productivity.”

For a lot of students, K-12 is a terrible waste of time. They graduate with pathetically weak skills, and many then proceed on to college, where they’re coddled for four more years. If our K-12 system wasn’t mainly interested in fat paychecks for adult workers and did even a half-way acceptable job of teaching students, there wouldn’t be any reason to talk about sending more of them to college.

The education establishment is one of Obama’s most vociferous interest groups. The professors and teachers and administrators and aides have a say, but not the unfortunate kids who are being shortchanged.

Finn and Petrilli also make a good point in saying that we don’t need more teachers, but instead better teachers. The training in most education schools is saturated with failed pedagogical nostrums and leftist notions about “social justice.” If we can’t destroy the ed schools, we need a way around them.