The Estimated $15 Trillion Cost of Our Inferior Education Outcomes in the U.S.

How much does it cost America to be dumb about education? $15 trillion, according to one source.

The cost of America's classroom failure: $15 trillion has this sobering story to tell:

"We all know there’s a price for being dumb. The problem is quantifying it.

But now some researchers have an estimate of the cost of America’s failure to make the grade in the classroom. It will cost the U.S. economy close to $15 trillion through the year 2050.
That’s trillion, with a T. It’s enough money to wipe out nearly all of America’s debt.

It’s not me saying that. It’s the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, an economics think-tank, which studied how the economy might grow if U.S. students hit the books. The report, published in January, makes for some sobering reading. It notes that the average U.S. student’s achievement at math and sciences has failed to keep up with that of our major competitors. In turn, that lack of knowledge has had a depressing effect on the dollar value of economic output by as much as $420 billion a year for the next 35 years, the report says....

The problem is that U.S. students are subpar when compared with major competitors in terms of mathematics and science. It ranks 24th out of the 34 countries of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), the so-called rich-countries club. So what, you may ask....

The issue at hand is how education fits in to the global economy. Money that’s spent to build factories and for other investments gets allocated to where expected return is the highest. Cost of labor is one factor in that rate of return. But the skills of workers is another. Within the developed, stable first-world countries of the OECD, worker productivity — which correlates with how educated your workforce is — is a major factor. . . .

In the simplest terms, better educated workers are more attractive to employers. Or put another way, a larger number of smarter Americans will attract and nurture more and better businesses. That’s where closing the education gap with competitors comes in. . . .

There’s reason to believe it’s possible. The study cites data from Massachusetts, where even the lowest performing three quarters of children do better than the average in the OECD. The same cross section in Florida fall woefully short of our competitors.

When something is being done right, as education seems to be in Massachusetts, it makes sense to follow suit.

Not doing so, now that’s dumber-er."

Summing Up

Education, productivity and prosperity go together.

In a free society, there is no excuse for having a system of government run public education that does not compare favorably to other countries. --- especially when the fix isn't more money but instead individual focus and free choice.

In fact, there's no excuse for Americans to be anything other than #1 when it comes to education or anything else. We're still the most prosperous and free country on earth, so getting back to #1 is a simple matter of establishing the proper priorities and truth telling.

There's absolutely no good reason for further delay with respect to allowing personal vouchers and removing the current stranglehold by teachers unions and their political allies.

We've tried the government run monopoly way of educating our young for far too long. It's time to give We the People and individual families the reins.

That's my take.

Thanks. Bob.