Compound 15% out over 15 years.
Educational reform is a broad subject and there's lots of room for experimentation. I'm fine with properly implemented charter schools, especially for the "thousand laboratories" effect. I don't think that chanting "markets" like a religious incantation is particularly effective. But most importantly, don't underestimate the effect of that healthcare cost.
Don't take my word for it. Go to your local town/city hall and pull the budgets for the last decade, then scan the line items. Unless your locality has something very different going on than everywhere else, you'll see huge increases in healthcare costs and cost-cutting relative to inflation everywhere else.
No.
Healthcare costs are up for everyone, everywhere, in every industry. The same increases that education has to pay for, every other employer does as well.
If other industries are not spending 15% compounded, and delivering less, then why is it happening in education?
Also, in many states teachers receive retiree health benefits, which were not funded by setting aside money during these teachers' working years- very few private industries still have these (extremely expensive, especially if you retire pre-65/Medicare) benefits, but education does and this stuff is going to be a budgetary minefield for the foreseeable future.