Eric Hanushek

Eric Alan Hanushek (born May 22, 1943) is an economist who has written prolifically on public policy with a special emphasis on the economics of education.

He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1961 to 1974.

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.

Hanushek held teaching positions at the U.S. Air Force Academy (1968–73) and at Yale University (1975–78) and was named professor of economics and public policy at the University of Rochester from 1978 to 2000.

Hanushek is a member of the Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, whose members, including Caroline M. Hoxby and Paul E. Peterson, support school accountability, teacher incentives, and charter schools and vouchers.

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

He testifies that the problem with schools is not so much lack of funds as inefficiency and asserts that increasing (or seeking to equalize) appropriations can be wasteful, since his analyses show that more funding produces inconsistent outcomes.

Instead of seeking to equalize funding among districts, Hanushek recommends introducing value-added testing to identify and remove underperforming teachers, greater accountability, and vouchers and charter schools to introduce market-based parental choice.

He labels those who oppose these measures as wanting to protect special interests and sacred cows and accuses them of wanting to maintain the status quo.

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

In a 1971 paper he introduced the concept of evaluating teacher effectiveness on the basis of student learning gains.

This idea is the basis of value-added assessments of teacher quality.

In his most recent book, The Knowledge Capital of Nations, Hanushek concludes that the quality of education is causally related to economic growth.

Hanushek is a periodic contributor to the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal and also 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.

The 20 school funding trials at which Hanushek has testified over the years include Serrano v. Priest (1973) in California, Somerset County Board of Education v Hornbeck in Maryland (1980), and Abbott v. Burke (1987) in New Jersey.

His 1986 paper, "The Economics of Schooling", reported finding an inconsistent relationship between school resources and student outcomes.

It provoked numerous responses.

For this reason he is associated, especially by his detractors, with the slogan "money doesn't matter".

Since 2000, he has been a Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, an American public policy think tank located at Stanford University in California.

He was awarded the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2021.

Hanushek advocates using economic analysis to improve student performance.

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

Hanushek was the recipient of an award for scholarship from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (a think tank) in 2004.

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

CREDO has issued numerous studies of the performance of charter schools in the United States.

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

His amicus brief was cited in the 2009 five-to-four U.S. Supreme Court decision of Horne v. Flores.

Citing Hanushek and Lindseth in a majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court held that in evaluating the actions of the state, attention should focus on student outcomes rather than on inequalities of spending and other inputs to schools.

From 2011 to 2013, he served on the Equity and Excellence Commission of the U.S. Department of Education.

He is a research professor at the Ifo Institute for Economic Research (University of Munich) and is the area coordinator for Economics of Education, CESifo Research Network.

He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

In the U.S. federal government, Hanushek has served as deputy director of the Congressional Budget Office, senior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisers, and senior economist for the Cost of Living Council.

At the state level, he has been appointed to state education advisory commissions by the governor of California and of Texas.

In 2011 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.

In that case, Denver District Judge Sheila Rappaport issued a 189-page decision rejecting the state's arguments, writing that: "Dr. Hanushek's analysis that there is not much relationship in Colorado between spending and achievement contradicts testimony and documentary evidence from dozens of well-respected educators in the State, defies logic, and is statistically flawed."

In 2013, the Colorado Supreme Court reversed Judge Rappaport's opinion and overturned the lower court's opinion in its entirety.

For his part, Hanushek maintains that state and federal court decisions "of the type we describe" (namely, rejecting funding equity appeals) may be justified because they "may persuade the legislature to adopt the more ‘disruptive’ reforms that may actually lead to improvements in student achievement."

Hanushek's Ph.D. thesis introduced a model that he termed an "educational production function" into the analysis of education issues.

This model postulated a clear distinction between inputs to education – including family, neighborhood, and peer factors – and outcomes of education – typically measured by student achievement, continuation in school, or ultimately income and employment.

According to Hanushek, when placed in the common value-added form, his model identifies the impact of added resources, given prior achievement and other non-school factors.