Gregory F. Branch, Eric A. Hanushek, and Steven G. Rivkin
It is widely believed that a good principal is the key to a successful school. Yet until very recently there was little rigorous research demonstrating the importance of principal quality for student outcomes, much less the specific practices that cause some principals to be more successful than others. This study provides new evidence on the importance of school leadership by estimating individual principals’ contributions to growth in student achievement. Our results indicate that highly effective principals raise the achievement of a typical student in their schools by between two and seven months of learning in a single school year; ineffective principals lower achievement by the same amount.
Education Next, Winter 2013
The rewards to improving our schools are very, very large, but the policies that are needed are politically difficult. Nonetheless, we have to change the direction of our schools in order to improve student outcomes.
To find out whether the United States is narrowing the international education gap, we compare learning gains over the period between 1995 and 2009 for 49 countries from most of the developed and some of the newly developing parts of the world. We extend this comparison to 41 states within the United States, allowing us to compare each to these states to the 48 other countries. In absolute terms, the performance of U.S. students in 4th and 8th grade on the NAEP in math, reading, and science improved noticeably between 1995 and 2009. Yet when compared to gains made by students in other countries, progress within the United States is middling, not stellar.
Education Next, Fall 2012
To find out the extent of U.S. progress toward closure of the international education gap, we provide estimates of learning gains over the period between 1995 and 2009 for the United States and 48 other countries from much of the developed and some of the newly developing parts of the world. We also examine changes in student performance in 41 states within the United States, allowing us to compare these states with each other as well as with the 48 other countries.
At a time of persistent unemployment, especially among the less skilled, many wonder whether our schools are adequately preparing students for the 21st-century global economy. Despite high unemployment rates, firms are experiencing shortages of educated workers, outsourcing professional-level work to workers abroad, and competing for the limited number of employment visas set aside for highly skilled immigrants. As President Barack Obama said in his 2011 State of the Union address, “We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time.
At a time of persistent unemployment, especially among the less skilled, many wonder whether our schools are adequately preparing students for the 21st-century global economy. Despite high unemployment rates, firms are experiencing shortages of educated workers, outsourcing professional-level work to workers abroad, and competing for the limited number of employment visas set aside for highly skilled immigrants. As President Barack Obama said in his 2011 State of the Union address, “We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time.
For some time, we have recognized that the academic achievement of schoolchildren in this country threatens, to borrow President Barack Obama’s words, “the U.S.’s role as an engine of scientific discovery” and ultimately its success in the global economy. The low achievement of American students, as reflected in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) (see “Teaching Math to the Talented,” features, Winter 2011), will prevent them from accessing good, high-paying jobs.
In Vancouver last winter, the United States proved its competitive spirit by winning more medals—gold, silver, and bronze—at the Winter Olympic Games than any other country, although the German member of our research team insists on pointing out that Canada and Germany both won more gold medals than the United
States. But if there is some dispute about which Olympic medals to count, there is no question about American math performance: the United States does not deserve even a paper medal.
There is a simple story that describes our schools and that on the surface just does not make sense. It goes like this: teachers are the most important element of schools; we value high quality schools, and we want to improve their performance; and we are unwilling to permit the pay of teachers to keep up with pay elsewhere in the economy. This piece will build on the salient parts of this history in order to discuss a range of policy options that have been proposed.
An underlying principle of U.S. social policy is that education is the key policy lever for addressing poverty. In the United States and around the world, education is almost always heavily subsidized by government. The justifications for government involvement vary, but increasingly rely on the suggestion that expanded educational investments both strengthen the national economy and improve the societal distribution of income and welfare. Education, for example, had a prominent role in the U.S. "War on Poverty," with many of the programs developed in the 1960s continuing through today.
Maintaining our innovative edge in the world depends importantly on developing a highly qualified cadre of scientists and engineers. To realize that objective requires a system of schooling that produces students with advanced math and science skills. To see how well the U.S. as a whole, each state, and certain urban districts do at producing high-achieving math students, the percentage of U.S.
In 2010 there were many questions about testing students, including how the information would be used. Parallel questions asked whether performance on the existing tests even mattered. After all, the test were narrow and did not reflect either deeper thinking skills or other noncognitive facets that research was beginning to identify as important for job performance and participation in society.
The United States is built on the idea that all individuals should be free to reach their full potential – the “pursuit of happiness” mentioned in the Declaration of Independence as one of the “unalienable rights” all Americans share. And a natural corollary is that society has the responsibility to provide at least the basic tools individuals need to pursue this goal effectively. While many aspects are involved in the accomplishing this goal, our schools clearly have a key role. But it is also clear that the schools have not been doing as much as they could to ensure that all Americans have the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in the twenty-first century. As a result, school reform is a topic on many people’s minds today – as it should be.
Proposals to reauthorize No Child Left Behind seek to ensure “equitable” access to effective teachers. The U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top fund rewards state plans for “ensuring equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals” and for “ambitious yet achievable annual targets to increase the number and percentage of highly effective teachers…in high-poverty schools.” These objectives pose a number of challenging questions. How readily can we identify effective teachers?
This article reviews the role of education in promoting economic growth, with a particular focus on the role of educational quality. It concludes that there is strong evidence that the cognitive skills of the population – rather than mere school attainment – are powerfully related to long-run economic growth. The relationship between skills and growth proves extremely robust in empirical applications. The effect of skills is complementary to the quality of economic institutions.
While many nations express a commitment to improved educational quality, education often slips down on the policy agenda when pressures on budgets or other issues arise. Because the benefits of educational investments are seen only in the future, it is possible to underestimate the value and the importance of improvements. This paper uses recent economic modeling to relate cognitive skills – as measured by PISA and other international instruments – to economic growth.
The national educational challenge was most forcefully articulated by the nation’s governors in 1989. As they met in Charlottesville, Virginia, they felt the need of the nation to improve the performance of students—a need articulated a half decade previously in A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983). And they declared that the United States should be first in the world in mathematics and science by the turn of the century (National Education Goals Panel 1991).
Questions of educational adequacy and school spending have long been a point of contention in school reform.Amid the recent economic turmoil and gaping state budget shortfalls, questions of whether court-ordered funding remedies have delivered—and why they have or have not—have taken on particular import. This forum offers two sharply different takes on our experiences to date, and what lessons they offer going forward.
Even before and certainly ever since the 1983 release of A Nation at Risk by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, national economic competitiveness has been offered as a primary reason for pushing school reform.The commission warned,“If only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets, we must dedicate ourselves to the reform of our educational system for the benefit of all—old and young alike, affluent and poor, majority and minority.”Responding to these urgent words, the National Governors Association, in 1989, pledged that U.S.
