Why not spend more for "education(??)" and then tax us by counting every transaction as income (you spend $100, get $100 in merchandise, that $100 counts as taxable income)? That way, they can create the illusion that they are doing something about the education crisis. All the while, waste that money on regulations that make such simple things as learning multiplication take 3 years.
I noticed that phonics is illegal in schools. Teachers using phonics are fired and penalized systematically. They have to teach children to read by teaching them each individual word, cutting into fluency and forcing them to learn each word separately. I learned good old fashioned phonics, and picked right up on it--all before entering kindergarten. I was also the only first grader reading fluently out of books, while everyone else was struggling to pronounce words.
I also taught myself multiplication and division in second grade, out of the workbook (I was not supposed to have seen the key). It took me all of ten seconds to master this, and a little more time to play with multiplying multiple digit numbers with other multiple digit numbers. Everyone else took until the fifth grade learning their times tables the hard way, writing endlessly--
1 X 1 = 1
1 X 2 = 2
1 X 3 = 3
1 X 4 = 4
1 X 5 = 5
1 X 6 = 6
1 X 7 = 7
1 X 8 = 8
1 X 9 = 9
1 X 10 = 10
2 X 1 = 2
2 X 2 = 4
2 X 3 = 6
2 X 4 = 8
2 X 5 = 10
2 X 6 = 12
2 X 7 = 14
2 X 8 = 16
2 X 9 = 18
2 X 10 = 20
And so on, through 10 X 10 = 100.
My way: Ten seconds plus the time it took to physically write my times tables out to 12 X 12 = 144. Their way: Waste all my tax dollars to prohibit teachers from teaching things that way. Waste 2 or 3 years making children repeatedly write their times tables, wasting huge amounts of math paper in the process (and pencils), and most children still don't know their times tables all the way to 10 X 10 by the fifth grade (remember, I constructed and learned my times tables out to 12 X 12 without a penny of your tax dollars, in second grade).
Try telling me that they aren't deliberately dogging children's education and wasting my tax dollars doing it. I think everyone should be able, properly taught, to learn multiplication and division, and reading (except truly mentally retarded children) that easily. Without wasting my tax dollars on systems that do not work.