Education changes lives in ways that go far beyond economic gains. The data show clearly that children who get better schooling are healthier and happier adults, more civically engaged and less likely to commit crimes. Schools not only teach students academic skills but also noncognitive skills, like grit and teamwork, which are increasingly important for generating social mobility. Even the friendships that students form at school can be life-altering forces for social mobility, because children who grow up in more socially connected communities are much more likely to rise up out of poverty.Conversely, limited social mobility hurts not just these children but all of society. We are leaving a vast amount of untapped talent on the table by investing unequally in our children, and it’s at all of our expense.Researchers have also used big data to uncover many specific education reforms that could lead to huge improvements. For instance, the evidence is clear that teachers are critical; my co-authors and I found that, when better teachers arrive at a school, the students in their classrooms earn around $50,000 more over each of their lifetimes. This adds up to $1.25 million for a class of 25 in just a single year of teaching.Smaller classes and increased tutoring also lead to long-term gains for students. Charter schools have revealed a range of effective approaches as well, often to the benefit of some of society’s most disadvantaged children. Children also benefit from longer school days, greater access to special education and less aggressive cutoffs for holding students back a grade.

With the right level of investment, education can not only provide more pathways out of poverty for individuals, but also restore the equality of opportunity that is supposed to lie at America’s core.

The opposite goes for private schools. Do they actually boost test scores? The evidence is mixed. But when parents wanted day care in a pandemic, private schools delivered. School vouchers — funding students instead of systems — are therefore another credible way to give us better value for our money. Arizona has already created a roughly $7,000 per student per year school voucher program, which gives private schools incentives to both cut costs and please parents. School choice doesn’t just protect families against future closures; it protects families against whatever goes wrong with education next. Though school choice is no panacea, sticking with our status quo is for suckers.

Fewer than half of corresponding public schools, funded by taxes rather than paying customers, were fully open by that time.

Simple: When schools shuttered, they stopped performing their sole undeniably valuable function: providing day care.

I freely admit that my dim assessment of American education is a minority view among my fellow economists, who offer piles of evidence that education has a big effect on what adults earn.

The general pattern is that grown-ups have shockingly little academic knowledge.

Public schools in many parts of the country were segregated by law until the mid-20th century, and they are racially and economically segregated to this day.

The Constitution doesn’t mention education

e did the Cajun two-step, lined up for the geography bee and learned to be together, imperfectly, in this ever-various country.

Wealthy parents hired tutors for their children; others opted for private and religious schools that reopened sooner; some had no choice but to leave their children alone in the house all day or send them to work for wages while the schoolhouse doors were closed.

To an astonishing degree, one person, Horace Mann, the nation’s first state secretary of education, forged this reciprocal commitment.

When you use ChatGPT to deepen your understanding, develop your ideas, or come to insights you might not otherwise have had, it should fall within the bounds of acceptable academic practices.

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