Study Links Rise in Test Scores to Nations' Output

EducationWeek (Robelen) - Relatively small improvements in the skills of a nation’s workforce can have a big effect on its future economic well-being, concludes a new international study that seeks to quantify those benefits. For the United States, the research suggests, modest gains in student achievement as measured by one international assessment could cumulatively boost the country’s gross domestic product by tens of trillions of dollars over the coming decades.

A “modest goal” of having all 30 industrialized countries in the OECD raise their average scores on PISA by 25 points in the next 20 years would provide an aggregate gain of $115 trillion in GDP “over the lifetime of the generation born in 2010,” the report projects. A gain of 25 points, it notes, is less than what was achieved from 2000 to 2006 by Poland, which the report calls the most rapidly improving nation on PISA.

Mr. Hanushek argues that, based on PISA results, the United States is not doing very well compared with other nations.