New at The Education Daly: American leaders are rightly focused on affordability—housing, groceries, transit, childcare—but many of them are ignoring a factor that will largely determine whether affordability is possible: education.

Recent NAEP data show that if states were allowed to submit their 2013 scores in 2024, 29 of them be good enough to rank #1 today. That’s how far student achievement has fallen.

The economic stakes are enormous: Stanford’s Eric Hanushek estimates the long-run GDP loss at $90 trillion—three times today’s entire U.S. economy.

Meanwhile, colleges like UC San Diego have more freshmen who need remediation in basics like fractions, despite having passed advanced math courses in HS. Grade inflation is up; readiness is down. And productivity—our engine of wage growth and affordability—tracks with skills.

Affordability plans that skip education won’t work. If we want families to afford housing, childcare, food, etc, we need better schools.