Hanushek recently did a back-of-the-envelope calculation about what even a rudimentary focus on teacher quality could mean for the United States.

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But voters increasingly see Democrats as beholden to teachers' unions and the status quo, says Eric Hanushek, an education expert at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

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Peer-reviewed studies by Eric Hanushek of Stanford University have considered the effect of eliminating the worst teachers by replacing these teachers with average teachers.

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Education expert Eric Hanushek estimates that the difference between a great teacher and bad teacher in a child's lifetime earnings is hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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According to Hanushek, the U.S. could close that gap simply by replacing the bottom six per cent to ten per cent of public-school teachers with teachers of average quality.

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Eric Hanushek, an economist at the University of Rochester, reviewed almost 400 studies of student achievement and found that, after controlling for family background, there is no consistent link between student performance and school resources.

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" Hanushek and Woessmann conclude that "In many developing countries, the share of any cohort that completes lower secondary education and passes at least a low benchmark of basic literacy in cognitive skills is below one person in ten.

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Summarizing an avalanche of efforts to equalize lives by improving the schools attended by poor kids, economist Eric A. Hanushek of the University of Rochester and economic consultant Julie A. Somers of PHB Hagler Bailly report that these efforts have failed.

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