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Researchers Gain Insight Into Education's Impact on Nations' Productivity

International comparisons help refine understanding.

A key assumption underpinning the report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education back in 1983 was that America’s economic well-being was intimately tied to the quality of its schools. While that idea made sense, it was still largely unexamined by solid research.

So critics of A Nation at Risk and the viewpoint it embodied had a field day, years later, when the U.S. economy—seemingly oblivious to the warnings in the commission’s famous report—boomed in the face of growing global competition.

“If our students are so bad,” one Newsweek columnist asked in 1998, “why is...