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Education majors generally have the lowest average ACT/SAT score of all the majors at a given institution of higher education.

Neither of my degrees is in Education.

I think upon reflection I'm down to around 7.04% on this assessment, but I'm awaiting more "data".

something around 10% seems reasonable to me

my father worked for the county roads department for 36 years

built almost every wooden bridge on every gravel road in the county

he never took an afternoon off , but he was constantly frustrated with almost everything around him causing everything but efficiency

There are plenty of good folks working for the government.  Unfortunately, they are either held back by factors out of their control or succumb to the daily grind of slackers and stupidity around them and give up the good fight.

I'm sure there are a few government departments that are working as well oiled machines and operate well compared to the private sector.  I just don't know of any.

Your post was to CD, but I'll add my $0.02.

I spent 20 years in the U.S. Army and I just finished my 21st year in public education.
I'll stick with my "50% on a good day."
At least the armed forces have to demonstrate every once in a while that they can fight a war (although lately they haven't had to demonstrate that they can win one).

Public schools seldom have to demonstrate that they are doing a good job in anything other than athletics.  When the voters get fed up, and statewide testing is imposed to see how the schools are doing, the public education lobby--made up of the district superintendents, school boards, teachers' unions, and the state education department--work to undermine confidence in the testing to the point that the testing regimen is soon diluted into meaninglessness.

In addition, I have never seen official letters, policies, announcements, etc., so illiterate as the ones I have seen in public education.  Here's the tiniest of examples.  Our school busses carry the inspirational exhortation, "GO [TEAM NAME]!"  With no comma after "GO."  I have pointed this out, but even the English teachers don't care, much less the administration.  So our busses drive around town advertising the fact that we don't care enough to properly punctuate a simple 3-word imperative.
Of course, I must concede that Disney did something like this with Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

For reference, I teach in a high school that is in the top 5% of public high schools in the state.  Statewide, there are 100 students each year named to the Academic All-State list.  We have three of those students this year, and that's a normal number for us.  In my 13 years at this school, we have had between two and four every year.

I'm not surprised.  OK ranks 45th in education, and has led the nation in "per pupil" education cuts for the last 5 years in a row.  This despite the fact that teachers had to strike in order to get a raise.

Investing in education pays for itself.  I will never understand this.

Thank you for being a teacher and a veteran.

something around 10% seems reasonable to me

my father worked for the county roads department for 36 years

built almost every wooden bridge on every gravel road in the county

he never took an afternoon off , but he was constantly frustrated with almost everything around him causing everything but efficiency

There are plenty of good folks working for the government.  Unfortunately, they are either held back by factors out of their control or succumb to the daily grind of slackers and stupidity around them and give up the good fight.

I'm sure there are a few government departments that are working as well oiled machines and operate well compared to the private sector.  I just don't know of any.

replace "government" with "corporate world" and it's the same exact thing.

20% of the workforce does 80% of the work, and the Peter principle totally applies to both.

The US spends more per capita on K-12 education than all but 5 small countries in the world, Austria is the largest of the bunch.  We spend more than Germany, France, UK, Japan, South Korea ....

Maybe we should spend more?  Or is our spending just not very efficient because we spend a lot of it on administration and filling out papers?

Lots of reasons for this.  You have to dig into the data to find more.

1.  The United States doesn't exactly compare well, because schools are mostly funded via local and state taxes.  This means that poor states and counties receive a tiny fraction of a more wealthy school district.  A suburb of San Francisco may spend $30,000 per student, while a poor county in Alabama may only spend $4,000 per student.  The average of both is $17,000, but that doesn't accurately describe the situation.
2.  Education is a much bigger than teacher salaries.  I can't think of another nation that has school sponsored sports, for example. 
3.  Most of these other countries have socialized health care.  In the United States, our education system often substitutes for this.  For example, our schools provide specialized services for the severely disabled.  In many other countries these students would have a nurse supplied by their health provider.  (This isn't a minor number, either.  Special education often costs 5x as much per student)

Basically - we classify a lot of costs under education that other countries wouldn't.

Does this mean you revised your percentage down to 10%?

I actually think most people in both corporate and government do a good job.  There are bad apples in both.