Below is another link dump discussing the business of education.

Marginal Revolution quotes a past-president of the American Teacher’s Federation and it sounds like something a member of the Korean Teacher’s Union would say:

When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.

When that school child does graduate, union member or not, his future isn’t as rosy as he might have hoped (Salon):

However, it’s an open question whether their hard work — and considerable expenditure — will help them find employment. A study published yesterday by Rutgers’s John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development paints an unencouraging picture of their chances in the current job market.

I remember playing Hamurabi, an early text-based computer game in high school and being surprised by how much each farmer needed to eat.  Does the American congress know how much it costs to educate a child?