Answer: maybe. Daniel Singal wrote a 1991 Atlantic article on the subject called "The Other Crisis," which asks the same question: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/educatio/singalf.ht... .

I suspect the bigger problem in K - 12 education at the moment is simpler: the system isn't really able to optimize teachers at all. For more on this, see the article collected here: http://jseliger.com/2009/11/12/susan-engel-doesnt-get .