The Core Knowledge Blog

If America had closed the achievement gap between 1983 and 1998 and had raised its performance to the level of such nations as Finland and South Korea, United States G.D.P. in 2008 would have been between $1.3 trillion and $2.3 trillion higher, notes a new McKinsey report, The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools.  “If we had closed the racial achievement gap and black and Latino student performance had caught up with that of white students by 1998, G.D.P. in 2008 would have been between $310 billion and $525 billion higher. If the gap between low-income students and the rest had been narrowed, G.D.P. in 2008 would have been $400 billion to $670 billion higher,” notes the Times’ Thomas Friedman. 

Two points:

1)  Duh.
2)  Teachers, raise your hand if you chose your profession because you wanted to raise GDP?  Anyone?? 

Look, everyone gets the connection between education, income and productivity.  But economic arguments, however troubling, will neither win hearts and minds among teachers, nor create  the “sense of urgency and follow-through” Friedman wants to see.  It recalls Oscar Wilde’s remark about cynics who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. 

“Did you see Friedman’s column?” millions of teachers are not asking themselves today.  “Damn, we’d better get cracking before we turn into an economic also-ran!”