I’m talking about both private and public spending. And by public I mean preschool-12, state subsidies for college, state and federal grant programs for college, etc. I found this statistic
http://www.policyalmanac.org/education/archive/doe_education_spending.shtml
Nearly $373 billion of revenues were raised to fund public education for grades prekindergarten through 12 in school year 1999–2000.
Its probably closer to $400 billion now. Plus I have read that state funding of college comes to about $50-60 billion a year. And the pell grant budget is about $13 billion a year. So that takes care of most of the public cost of education and I assume it nears $500 billion a year, what about private spending?