28 Facts About Eric Hanushek

Eric Alan Hanushek is an American economist who has written prolifically on public policy with a special emphasis on the economics of education.

Eric Hanushek was awarded the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2021.

Eric Hanushek has authored numerous, highly cited articles on the effects of class size reduction, high-stakes accountability, teacher effectiveness, and other education related topics.

Eric Hanushek is a periodic contributor to the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal and appears in court cases as a paid expert witness testifying for the state in lawsuits brought by plaintiffs attempting to equalize disparities in funding of school districts.

Eric Hanushek received a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Air Force Academy in 1965 and a PhD in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968.

Eric Hanushek served in the US Air Force from 1961 to 1974.

Eric Hanushek held teaching positions at the US Air Force Academy and at Yale University and was named professor of economics and public policy at the University of Rochester from 1978 to 2000.

Eric Hanushek was a presidential appointee to the Board of Directors of the National Board for Education Sciences that approves the research priorities of the US Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences and was the board chair from 2008 to 2010.

Eric Hanushek is a research professor at the Ifo Institute for Economic Research and is the area coordinator for Economics of Education, CESifo Research Network.

Eric Hanushek is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor.

Eric Hanushek is married to Margaret Raymond, director of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University.

Since the early 1970s, when plaintiffs have filed lawsuits seeking to overthrow school funding based on local property taxes as inequitable, Eric Hanushek has been called to testify as an expert witness in defense of the state.

In particular, Eric Hanushek identifies teachers' unions among the entrenched or special interests that oppose the measures he recommends.

The 20 school funding trials at which Hanushek has testified over the years include Serrano v Priest in California, Somerset County Board of Education v Hornbeck in Maryland, and Abbott v Burke in New Jersey.

In 2011 Eric Hanushek was the central expert witness for the defense in the highly publicized case of Lobato vs State of Colorado, named for Taylor Lobato, who in 2005 was a middle-school student when her parents filed a suit that claimed her San Luis Valley school district was underfunded compared to wealthier districts.

Eric Hanushek suggests that money allocated ought to be spent implementing the policies with proven efficacy, such as replacing teachers who fail to raise test scores and closing schools which persistently fail to produce reasonable student achievement.

Eric Hanushek concludes that teacher quality is by far the most important factor in raising student achievement and, moreover, that teacher quality is not closely related to such factors as teacher salaries, educational background, or experience.

In contrast to James Coleman, who in the 1960s had suggested that schools and teachers had little effect on student performance, Eric Hanushek introduced the idea of judging teacher effectiveness based on the learning gains of students.

Together with co-authors John Kain and Steven Rivkin, Eric Hanushek has studied the influence of peer ability on achievement in elementary classrooms in Texas, concluding that the achievement level of peers exerts a positive influence whose impact is roughly constant across the achievement distribution.

Eric Hanushek contends that in both individuals and nations, cognitive skills are causally related to economic outcomes such that variations in growth rates across countries can be largely explained by consideration of the role of cognitive skills.

Previous studies have measured human capital through years of schooling attained by the labor force, Eric Hanushek believes that cognitive skills as measured by international test scores, give a more accurate picture in industrialized and developing countries alike.

Eric Hanushek argues that the statistical analysis that Hanushek and Woessmann use to support this claim is invalid because their model is mis-specified.

Eric Hanushek discussed the impact of replacing low performing teachers with average teachers in the movie Waiting for "Superman".

Eric Hanushek responded in the pages of Education Next, accusing the panel of "bias" and calling its evidence of poor or non-existent educational improvement "weak".

Together with Ludger Woessmann of the University of Munich and other co-authors, Eric Hanushek has developed comparative data-based approaches for identifying the impact of differing educational systems.

Eric Hanushek is on record as opposing early ability tracking on the grounds that research shows that early tracking increases educational inequality and can reduce average performance.

Eric Hanushek looked at the effects of vocational education versus general education.

Eric Hanushek has advocated targeted policies, such as providing text books, which can lead to more efficient schooling by cutting down on grade repetition.