Eric A. Hanushek

Who is Eric A. Hanushek?

Eric Alan Hanushek received a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Air Force Academy in 1965 and a PhD in economics from MIT in 1968. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1961 to 1974. Dr. Hanushek held teaching positions at the U.S. Air Force Academy and at Yale University and was named professor of economics and public policy at the University of Rochester from 1978-2000. Since 2000 he has been Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, an American public policy think tank located at Stanford University in California. He has written prolifically on public policy with a special emphasis on the economics of education.

Hanushek is the author of numerous statistical analyses on the topics of class size reduction, high stakes accountability, and value-added assessments of teacher quality. He is known for his conclusion that "money doesn't matter"—i.e., that in his opinion the amount of money spent in an American school district is not systematically related to the amount of student learning in that district. He introduced using gains in student achievement to assess the effectiveness of teachers. He also contends that the quality of education is causally related to economic growth. Hanushek is a frequent contributor to the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal and also appears frequently in court cases as an expert witness testifying about increasing the funding of school districts.