This paper quantifies the economic benefits of educational improvement covered by the educational goals of the European Union, providing disaggregated projections for each of the EU countries and comparative economic results for alternative policy goals. Increased student achievement by 25 PISA points across the EU would be expected to add €71…

"The United States' failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country's ability to thrive in a global economy." Such was the dire warning recently issued by a task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. Chaired by former New York City schools chancellor Joel I. Klein and former U.S.…

The magnitude of variation in the quality of teachers, even within each school, is startling. Teachers who work in a given school, and therefore teach students with similar demographic characteristics, can be responsible for increases in math and reading levels that range from a low of one-half year to a high of one and a half years of learning…

While many nations express a commitment to improved educational quality, education often slips down on the policy agenda. 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 report uses recent economic modelling to relate cognitive…

Concentration on school attainment goals without close attention to school quality has hurt developing countries. Recent evidence shows that individual incomes, the distribution of income, and economic growth rates are all closely related to the cognitive skills of the population. While direct evidence from developing countries is thin, the…

Argues that human capital formation is the key to economic growth, that U.S. students are falling behind the rest of the World in math and science achievement because of the decline in the quality of their schooling, and that without better schools, other factors such as a quality higher education system may not sustain future U.S. economic…

Attention to the quality of human capital in different countries naturally leads to concerns about how school policies relate to student performance. The data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study provide a way of comparing performance in different schooling systems. The results of analyses of educational production functions…