EconTalk Making Schools Better: A Conversation with Rick Hanushek
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Jul 24, 2006 
Rick Hanushek, a Stanford economist focused on education policy, digs into why school spending soared while test scores barely moved. He explores class size, teacher credentials, and why they often miss the mark. The conversation turns to teacher quality, merit pay, principal accountability, union rules, school choice, charters, and better testing.
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Tennessee Class Size Experiment Found Only Small Gains
- Tennessee randomly assigned students to classes of about 15 versus 23 or 24 and found only small early gains.
- Those gains appeared mainly in kindergarten or first grade and did not keep compounding in later years despite the much higher cost.
Several Good Teachers Can Offset Family Disadvantage
- Researchers estimate teacher quality by tracking yearly student gains, and some teachers reliably produce high growth year after year.
- Hanushek says three or four years with an 85th-percentile teacher could erase the average achievement gap tied to low-income family background.
Schools Know Their Best Teachers But Ignore It
- Hanushek says principals, teachers, parents, and even janitors usually agree on who the best and worst teachers are.
- Public-school tenure and rigid pay schedules then shield weak teachers and reward only experience and graduate education instead of classroom results.