>What mattered is the parents of the poor school worked 2 jobs and had no time for the kids. The parents of the rich kids had stay at home moms and tutors.

Or single-parent vs. two-parent households. Controlling for everything else, that fact seems to be the biggest culprit in the future success of a child. Working two jobs is a symptom of a single-parent household

Working two jobs is the symptom of not making enough money to survive on. My mom (a teacher) worked multiple jobs (and yes, single parent household). She had friends when I was growing up and we had neighbors who had multiple jobs with both parents. Service jobs often don't pay enough to live, however, these are increasingly the bulk of the employment opportunities. So back to my original post, we spend $1+ million on each cruise missile. That could send dozens to college. We can't get back manufacturing jobs. Even if they're in the U.S., they'll be automated. What we need is more innovation. We can't get back coal either, but we can figure out what the next big energy source will be. Who knows, maybe we can get coal back....perhaps there's a super efficient way to do carbon capture that we haven't developed. The point is we have a huge technical debt in our society. Education is just one bit of it.

>She had friends when I was growing up and we had neighbors who had multiple jobs with both parents.

Again, a kid coming out of single-parent household will always be disadvantaged in aggregate compared to the kid who comes out of a two-parent household. Two parents having multiple jobs is still better than one parent having multiple jobs. The government can't fix that.

And I don't think either presidential candidate will cut back military or increase college spending. It's not the popular thing to do.