ENDANGERING PROSPERITY

A Global View of the American School

By Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, Ludger Woessmann

Brookings Institution Press

Copyright © 2013 THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8157-0373-0

Contents

Foreword………………………………………………………….viiAcknowledgments……………………………………………………xi1 An Economic Future Imperiled………………………………………12 Human Capital and Economic Prosperity………………………………173 A Global View of U.S. Student Proficiency Rates……………………..334 U.S. Advanced Performance in Global Perspective……………………..475 Economic Benefits of Higher Performance…………………………….576 A Global View of Growth in U.S. Achievement…………………………697 Substantive Concerns and Political Obstacles………………………..85Appendixes………………………………………………………..A Methodology for Comparing U.S. and International Performance………….105B Two Measures of Reading Proficiency………………………………..117Notes…………………………………………………………….121References………………………………………………………..133Index…………………………………………………………….141

CHAPTER 1

AN ECONOMICFUTURE IMPERILED

We know what it takes to compete for the jobs andindustries of our time. We need to out-innovate,out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.—Barack Obama, 2011

Americans like to believe that their youth are truly exceptional.A glow of pride spreads across the land wheneveryoung U.S. athletes win more medals than any other nationin the Olympics, as in Vancouver in the winter of 2010 andin London in the summer of 2012. It is true, as the Germanauthor of this book likes to remind his colleagues, that atleast in the most recent Winter Olympics, Germany wonmore gold medals than the United States, but however youcount these things, the United States was at or near the topof the heap. So it is not pleasant when Americans learnthat their education system does not perform at the sameworld-class level as did those U.S. athletes in Vancouver.For example, among the twenty-five nations who won atleast one medal—gold, silver, or bronze—in Vancouver(and also participated in the PISA international student achievementtest), the United States came in eighteenth in advanced mathachievement, just edging out the United Kingdom, Italy, Russia,Latvia, Croatia, and Kazakhstan.

It is fashionable to attribute these results to sizable numbers ofminority students, or to student home environments, or to the qualityof schools in urban areas, certain states, or regions. And it is truethat African American and Hispanic students perform at a lowerlevel than do white and Asian students, that student performancein urban areas is particularly discouraging, and that some statesand regions of the country have students who score at higher levels.But we show in this short book that the problems in Americaneducation are not limited to gaps in performance between whiteand black, Asian and Hispanic, northern states and southern ones,or even between cities and suburbs. Even when we look at the bestthe United States has to offer, we seldom find performances that liftthe United States to the top of the world, especially in mathematics.

Nothing is more important for the long-run future of theUnited States than the knowledge and skills of the next generation.On this score, the United States is in trouble, because itsfuture, as indicated by the math, science, and reading skill levelsachieved by today’s students, looks quite depressing compared towhat is possible and what has been achieved in other countries.Realizing the country’s potential is still within reach, but doingso will take more than small steps and timid actions abetted bygeneral confusion as to whether serious policy changes are worththeir political costs.

Many commentators put the problem of schools in the contextof generational conflict. The retirees are pitted against the children.They are portrayed as wanting nothing more than greaterSocial Security and Medicare payments along with lower taxes,implying that educational spending must give way to those priorities.By this argument, as the population ages, the educationalneeds of children will face an uphill battle for support.

Our view is different. The battle is not young versus old but aconflict between the needs of school-age children and the interestsof those adults who have agreed to educate them in our publicschools. The school workforce—teachers, principals, superintendents,other administrators, and ancillary personnel—too oftenfavors only those changes to the status quo that enhance theirincome or lighten their workload. They oppose changes in theorganization and structure of the school system that would likelyenhance the learning opportunities of those for whom they areeducationally responsible. When that happens, the promise of ournation’s prosperity is endangered.

The available evidence about the economic gains possible withimproved schooling underscores the common interests of ouryoung and our old. With higher economic growth, somethingwe can expect with improved schools, we could solve the long-runfiscal problems that are adding to the debt load of state andfederal governments while threatening the long-term stability ofSocial Security and Medicare. And we could lessen, if not eliminate,the divisive political conflicts over the size and shape of governmentthat have overwhelmed our policymakers.

The Cacophony of Unmet Goals

Leaders have long known that education is key to the nation’sprosperity and security. Immediately after the Soviet Unionlaunched the Sputnik satellite, the U.S. Congress in 1958 passedthe National Defense Education Act to ensure the “security of theNation” through the “fullest development of the mental resourcesand technical skills of its young men and women.”

National security was no less on the minds of membersof a 2012 task force that inquired into the extent to whichU.S. schools were competitive with those in other countries.Sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, and chairedby former New York City schools chancellor Joel I. Klein andformer U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, the task forcewarned, “Poorly educated and semi-skilled Americans cannotexpect to effectively compete for jobs against fellow U.S. citizensor global peers, and are left unable to fully participate in andcontribute to society.” They further summarized the overallproblem, “In short, America’s failure to educate is affecting itsnational security.”

In between those dates, publicly expressed concerns aboutthe quality of U.S. schools steadily intensified. In 1983 a governmenttask force submitted to the Reagan administration awidely heralded report carrying the title A Nation at Risk. In1989 President George H. W. Bush, together with the governorsof forty-nine of the fifty states, set the goal that U.S. educationwould be at the top of world rankings by the year 2000. In 1993President Bill Clinton urged passage of the Goals 2000: EducateAmerica Act, “so that all Americans can reach internationallycompetitive standards.” Two years later, the legislation wasenacted into law by a wide, bipartisan congressional majority.In 2006 President George W. Bush observed that “the bedrockof America’s competitiveness is a well-educated and skilled workforce.”

Despite these proclamations, the position of the Americanschool remains problematic when viewed from an internationalperspective. Only 7 percent of U.S. students in 2009 performedat the advanced level in mathematics, a percentage lower thanthat attained by twenty-nine other countries and political jurisdictions.The problem is not limited to top-performing students.In 2009 just 32 percent of eighth graders in the United Stateswere deemed proficient in mathematics, placing the United Statesthirty-second when ranked with participating internationaljurisdictions.

Nor is the public unaware of the situation. When a cross sectionof the American public was asked how well the United Stateswas doing in math, compared to other industrialized countries,the average estimate placed the United States at eighteenth, onlymodestly better than its actual standing. Americans do not findit difficult to agree with the summary words of the Council onForeign Relations task force report: “Overall, U.S. educationaloutcomes are unacceptably low.”

State leaders are no less aware of the challenges facingAmerican education. Many governors—most notably, Bill Clintonof Arkansas and George W. Bush of Texas—lifted their ownnational profile by adopting reform policies within their states.The strategy has gone on for more than a hundred years. CharlesAycock, governor of North Carolina during the first years of thelast century, is remembered as “the ‘Education Governor’ for hissupport of the public school system…. He felt that no lastingsocial reform could be accomplished without education. He supportedincreased salaries for teachers, longer school terms, andnew school buildings.”

A host of Aycock successors have echoed his calls, hoping thatmoniker would be applied to them as well. The 1989 meeting ofgovernors made every subsequent governor into an “education”governor. The united effort, which crossed partisan and ideologicalboundaries, is less surprising than it might seem, as educationis one of the most costly of state government responsibilities andone that is of great concern to the general public. A gubernatorialcandidate cannot succeed without making firm commitments toschool improvement.

Oddly, political leaders are seldom punished for the gapbetween educational promises and educational outcomes. Acommon commitment to high achievement has, for the mostpart, failed to translate into broad, substantive, real-worldaccomplishments. The reasons for lack of gubernatorialaccountability are not altogether clear. Perhaps gubernatorialterms of office are too short for voters to assess whether or notpromises have been fulfilled. Perhaps the educational workforcecares mainly about policies of concern to their materialwell-being, while the public at large is poorly informed or easilydistracted by other issues. What we do know is that school failuresseldom generate much more than calls for renewed effort,backed by additional spending, reinforced by still more steadfastcommitments to move forward. New goals leapfrog unattainedpast goals.

The Distraction of the Present

We do not join with those who connect the call for educationalreform with current economic difficulties. A dramaticallyenhanced education system today would do next to nothing fornext month’s unemployment rate, or next quarter’s growth ingross domestic product (GDP), or next year’s federal and statebudget deficits. Too often, facts from the immediate present areused in campaign and legislative debates to justify—or oppose—adoptionof long-range educational reforms. It is quite understandablethat the sluggish recovery from the 2008 recessionhaunts political conversations about nearly every conceivablepublic issue, even when the connection is remote. For some, ashort-term surplus of educated workers is interpreted as evidencethat young adults are too well educated, while, for others, highrates of short-term unemployment are attributed to an inadequatelytrained workforce.

Such rants completely miss the fundamental problem thatneeds to be addressed. Linking the schools of today to currentunemployment levels or quarterly rates of economic growthinvites erroneous comparisons and conclusions. It may be truethat our economy performed at lower levels in the first decadeof the twenty-first century because student achievement reacheda plateau during the 1970s, but that long-run impact must bekept distinct from the impact of the recent financial crisis andeconomic recession. Certainly the quality of schools now is of nosignificance to our economy today. High school students in 2013,no matter how skilled or unskilled they might be, have nothingto do with the contemporary state of the economy. Even the skillsof those schooled five to ten years ago have only marginal effectson today’s economy, as they constitute but a small segment ofthe workforce. The recent slow-growth experience in the UnitedStates is a warning about the costs to society of economic stagnation,and it may be due in part to educational stagnation overthe past half century, but fixing U.S. schools will not immediatelyalter the course of the current business cycle.

Consider, for example, discussions of the short-term employmentprospects of highly skilled workers in the midst of the 2008recession. Isn’t it the case, the argument went, that scientists,engineers, and other highly qualified technicians are unemployedor forced to accept jobs that made inadequate use of their skills?If those with skills are unemployed, why do we need to worryabout educating more of the same? That perspective takes a verystatic view of the U.S. economy and ignores the dynamic natureof economies in general. When a society becomes more productive,jobs open up most quickly for those who are the mostskilled, and their work then creates still more jobs. That kindof dynamic interaction between skills and economic growth haslong been the hallmark of U.S. success. Conversely, if a societydoes not supply the skills and if the pace of technological changeslows, the potential demand for those skills will never becomeapparent.

The Long-Run Imperative

The immediate future is locked in, not capable of being alteredby anything that happens in the nation’s schools. The focushere is on the well-being of the citizens of the United Stateswhen our children and grandchildren are active adult membersof our society. We are not writing about next year nor even thenext decade. Barring some catastrophe, the United States willover the short run continue to be the world’s dominant economy,and the people of the United States will continue to enjoythe fruits of that reality. The immediate future could be a littlebit better or a little bit worse, depending on the actions takennow, but short of some external shock, the range of possiblenear-term futures is quite small.

The range of possible futures widens steadily as one peersfurther into the future, as that is not locked in by past decisionsin the same way that the next few years are. And thelong-term path depends on decisions that are now being made,either explicitly or implicitly. Unfortunately, the consequencesof those decisions will not be fully known until they, too, cannotbe altered.

The long-run future of the U.S. economy depends cruciallyon the capacities and skills of those being educated today. Thoseskills will have their impact when today’s youth become the coreof our labor force and our society. Unfortunately, we know thatthe United States today is not doing as well as other countrieseither in lifting all students up to math and reading proficiencyor in bringing a significant share up to an advanced level ofaccomplishment. When only 7 percent of students perform atthe advanced level in math and only 32 percent are deemed proficient,and when at the same time an educated workforce is keyto international standing and economic growth, a long-term challengestares a nation in the face.

Comparisons with other countries tell us what can and mustbe done. The United States is in the middle of the pack amongdeveloped nations in terms of the skills that demonstrably drivenational economic growth. The performance of its students oninternational math and science exams provides a valuable metricfor assessing its standing, and the U.S. record in this regard ismediocre at best. The failure to develop adequate skills, whateconomists call human capital, has truly profound implicationsfor U.S. productivity growth in the next half century. And ofcourse, the skills being developed in other countries will havetheir own implications for growth in productivity throughoutthe industrialized and developing parts of the internationaleconomy.

In simplest terms, nations that have a highly skilled laborforce grow faster. This key fact has become the conventionalwisdom throughout the world and is proclaimed repeatedly bypolitical leaders. Yet in practice, this bare fact has yet to be fullyappreciated, if actions, rather than words, are the measure of theseriousness with which it is truly understood. Those responsiblefor education policy have yet to show that they know and carethat a high level of human capital induces long-run growth in productivity,which leads to greater GDP and, in turn, to improvedliving standards.

We are not arguing that the United States should attemptto retard the educational progress of other nations in order topromote its own citizenry. On the contrary, growth in humancapital around the world will redound to the benefit of all, ascountries exchange the products of their better-educated workforces.We do not live in a zero-sum world, where growth inother countries comes at the expense of the United States. Thegains of other nations will not subtract from gains achieved inthe United States, nor will faster growth by the United Statesdiminish the prospects for other nations. A world with higherlevels of human capital will, in the absence of war, be of greatbenefit to all nations. The relative growth of the different nationswill, however, affect the future prestige and influence of each. Itwill have implications for the kinds of jobs and economy thatwe have and whether we exhibit technological leadership ortake a more supporting role. The United States cannot affordto ignore investments in human capital in the hope that it canbenefit from the accomplishments of others. If the United Statestakes that strategy, it will endanger the prosperity of the nextgenerations.
(Continues…)Excerpted from ENDANGERING PROSPERITY by Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, Ludger Woessmann. Copyright © 2013 THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION. Excerpted by permission of Brookings Institution Press.
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