Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education; Ludger Woessman is from the University of Munich. Hanushek and Woessman discuss a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that links modest and achievable gains in student learning with large increases in gross domestic product (GDP) over the long run. Video transcript (5:38)

On primary and secondary education, as on most topics, Mr. Obama stayed at 30,000 feet in his speech last night. . . .

At the risk of making technological marvels sound like magic potions, a very good case can be made —or more precisely, Terry Moe and John Chubb have made it in their very good book—that the most potent force for fundamentally changing such patterns of mediocrity and worse is higher and higher technology, as it can accomplish what politics and bureaucracies are encoded to block. . . .

Any national tests and standards need to be strong, substantive, and well administered. . . .