A billion-dollar campus?

Taxpayers might not mind the escalating cost of public schools so much if they believed they were getting good value for their money.

In fact, however, K-12 educational standards are far lower here than in other parts of the developed world.

But even by our watered-down standards, many schools in the nation's second-largest school district -- Los Angeles -- persistently rank among the nation's lowest performing.

The district has a 50 percent dropout rate. Nearly 3,000 teachers have been laid off over the past two years; the academic year and programs have been slashed. Yet the district still faces a reported $640 million budget deficit.

Not a time to be gimmicking up a new public high school with fine art murals, a marble memorial, a manicured public park and a state-of-the-art swimming pool, one might think.

But one would be wrong.

Thanks in part to land costs and unionized labor, construction costs for the L.A. Unified district are the second-highest in the nation.

So by the time the district's Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools open on the site of the former Ambassador Hotel, where the Democratic presidential contender was assassinated in 1968, its $578 million price tag will mark the K-12 complex as the nation's most expensive public school ever.

"There's no more of the old, windowless cinder-block schools of the '70s, where kids felt, 'Oh, back to jail,' " said Joe Agron, editor-in-chief of American School & University, a school construction journal. "Districts want a showpiece for the community, a really impressive environment for learning."

Nationwide, dozens of schools have surpassed $100 million with amenities including atriums, orchestra-pit auditoriums, food courts, even bamboo nooks. Cafeterias are getting fancier, seeking to retain students on campus. Wireless internet and other high-tech installations have become standard.

"Children learn better in more pleasant surroundings," the supposed experts explain.

Yes, up to a point.

But when stock prices soar so high that it would take many years of the company's dividends to pay back the purchase price, savvy investors realize buyers are no longer valuing those shares based on a sensible estimate of returns, but are instead caught up in a "bubble" frenzy, hoping there will still be one stupider buyer to whom they can "flip" those overpriced holdings tomorrow.

A similar re-evaluation of the benefits Americans are getting from their "public education" dollars is long past due.

What does it cost for a non-unionized teacher at a bare-bones private school -- given a student body that wants to be there and afforded the opportunity to impose reasonable discipline -- to produce a class of cheerful children eagerly demonstrating competence above their "grade level"?

There is your baseline. Why should we pay more for less?