Today's students will earn 8% less (but won't know how much that is)

The decline in reading and math achievement since 2013 means today's students will earn 8 percent less over a working lifetime, estimates economist Eric Hanushek in a Washington Post op-ed.

Estonians are the top non-Asian math students.

The pandemic is responsible for just over half of the declines in student achievement in the past dozen years, he writes. Achievement was falling steadily before schools closed: "American 15-year-olds are 34th in the world in math."

"Past evidence shows clearly that people who know more earn more," he writes. And those who know less earn less. His Stanford research predicts long-term economic impacts for young Americans and for the economy as a whole.

Educators have tried all sorts of things, Hanushek writes. "Over the past four decades, school districts have expanded graduation requirements, increased teacher pay, reduced class sizes, introduced consequential accountability, expanded preschool opportunities, incorporated new curriculums, experimented with new technologies, deployed small schools, provided charter schools and other choice options, and of course substantially increased funding."

Per-student spending is more than 2½ times that of 1970. Yet, reading achievement of eighth-graders in 2024 equals that of eighth-graders in 1975. Achievement gaps by family income are also virtually unchanged.

Hanushek sees too much regulation and too "little attention to differences in teacher and school effectiveness."

"D.C. and Dallas show students win when districts revamp teacher evaluation and salary systems to reflect classroom effectiveness," he writes. But few districts are following that lead.

In his alternative scenario, effective schools are allowed to "continue what they are doing" and "teachers are supported and rewarded for their effectiveness." Student performance and progress is rewarded. "Federal and state authorities support and reward school performance rather than trying to govern how schools produce learning."