March 23, 2012 3:13PM # How Much Education Spending Is Enough? By [Adam B. Schaeffer](https://www.cato.org/people/adam-b-schaeffer) --- SHARE The *Washington Times* [reports](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/22/education-secretary-duncan-defends-big-increase-in/) that the Obama administration’s answer to everything really is simply to spend more: > Education Secretary Arne Duncan used Thursday’s appearance before a key House subcommittee to not only defend the Obama administration’s request for a $1.7 billion increase in school funding for fiscal 2013, but also to rip the GOP budget proposal laid out by Rep. Paul Ryan earlier this week. It’s easy to get confused these days, what with billions of dollars of spending at the national, state, and local levels. How much do we actually spend, and what do we get for it? For all of you who want to get the details but don’t have much time, or have family and friends who need to be introduced to reality, here’s *[Everything you need to know about public school spending in less than 2½ minutes](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDr7-_5Ulz0):* Oh, and below is an explanation for why your friends and family probably have no idea how much we spend on K‑12 public education. (Government schools aren’t very keen on transparency and accountability.) ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).