Ed Glaeser, my college economics professor:

 
Mindless increases in school spending will be an expensive fiasco that will generate more disillusionment than human capital….

The clearest result from decades of education research is the importance of teacher quality… Improving teacher quality has about twice the impact on student outcomes as radically reducing class size….

The first step toward improving teacher quality is to attract more talented teachers. The second step is to improve teacher selection on the job, promoting the best and encouraging the worst to help society in some other way.