opportunity cost

According to one recent analysis, if the United States had managed to improve students’ science and math skills during the 1990s—enough to match top-performing countries on the 2006 PISA assessment—then the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would have increased by 4.5 percent by 2015, a dollar amount equal to what the U.S. federal government currently spends per year on K–12 education. Even if the United States takes twenty years to reform and become globally competitive, its GDP could eventually realize an increase by a substantial 36 percent.

Source: E.A. Hanushek, D.T. Jamison, E. A. Jamison, and L. Woessman, ―Education and Economic Growth, Education Next 8, no. 2 (2008): 62–70.


Short Sighted

Alliance for Excellent Education