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Public story · 2026-08-23 · high
A CEPR study of 26,000 Chinese secondary students found entrance exam scores fell 18-24% over the following two years.
Why now: The CEPR working paper is the subject of a 165-point Hacker News thread as of August 23.
Strömberg, Lei, and Wu tracked 26,000 Chinese secondary students for six months, per a CEPR working paper.
Homework scores for AI users rose 18%, homework time fell from 64 minutes to 45, and monthly closed-book exam scores dropped 20% relative to non-users. Over the full two-year window, entrance exam scores fell 18 to 24%.
About 80% of AI users showed what the researchers call homework outsourcing, using the tool to produce answers instead of working through them.
The homework score went up because the AI is good at homework. The exam score went down because the student didn't do the homework, the AI did.
Homework is a proxy, and so is a pull request or a design doc. A system that grades the artifact instead of the capability behind it is exposed once AI can produce that artifact cheaply.
The gap between output and retained skill doesn't show up on the thing being measured. It shows up later, closed-book, when the tool isn't there.
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