Introduction
The purpose of this article is not only to make an important point, i.e. that it would benefit us all as tax payers, to pay teachers much more, but to also give another empirical example of the logic or world view this project wants to get across. Before reading this article I recommend you read my article on why education (schools and universities) is the most important system in our society, yet at the same time the most ineffective, and if you’re familiar with my concept of the multiplier effect of innovation it would also help.
As I’ve written before, education is not just the most important system in our society, it is also easily the least efficient. The potential multiplier effect of innovation in the education system, i.e. how much more value we could get with the same or less input/cost, would be tremendous for every aspect of the economy and society. No education at all gives you Tarzan while really good education gives you kids of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs or even just your average Scandinavian. Generally, those with good education do an outstanding job; know what they want in life and have the tools to fulfill their dreams; the list goes on an on. Of course, there is a co-evolution or virtuous (vicious) cycle of many factors that make an advanced society with people whose potential is unlocked (parents, society itself etc.), but the main input that puts all this on a new and better trajectory is education.
And in education the core input are teachers. They are the main input for the most important input for any kind of output in our economy and society, i.e. all products and services and how people live their lives. While that sentence sounds a bit like a robot wrote it, it’s a logical line of thought and means, in simpler terms: teachers have the most important job! Yes, doctors are also really important, but doctors could not be doctors without an education in the first place. We can argue about whether teachers are even necessary in their traditional sense, but I believe even though students can learn more from high-quality YouTube videos than 99% of teachers they are still important, for example as motivators or supervisors for real-world projects.
In the US, there are around 3.6 million (1) full-time equivalent teachers, i.e. 1.1% of the population (like in most developed countries). They make pretty much exactly what the average salary is, $58,353 in the US to be precise (2). Now, how much can you expect from people that are paid average salaries?
There’s a reason why managers are paid so much. Well, supply and demand in a free market economy, but there is a justification why some managers make six or even seven figures. A great manager might just be 1% more than others, but that gets him or her hired, because in a billion dollar company 1% is ten million dollars. And then to pay that manager a million dollars is still a win-win for everybody. If by law managers pay would be restricted to $58,353 you wouldn’t get the best people doing the job and those who would do it would not do it as well. Even if it’s just 1% and despite the rich getting richer, that would cost the US economy $200bn and hence the poor would not benefit from that either. The same logic applies to smaller organizations (e.g. with $1.5m revenue), too, where a good manager can have a greater direct impact than just 1% and therefore should also be incentivized with a higher pay than average.
Why It Makes Sense to Pay Teachers As Much As Managers
This is true just as much for teachers. Let’s say the average teacher teaches around 25 young people a year. If we just use the current income level that means that every person (who once was a kid and went to school) creates value worth $59,000 (average income). Although looking at education as an investment, which it is, this will be much more over the next generation as GDP/capita, in a sense the return on investment, rises 2-3% a year (a). That would still be an operation or team worth $1.475m – and the person in charge, a teacher, makes around the same as the average wage – $58,353 in 2016-17 (2).
Therefore, just mathematically speaking, really good teachers who inspire their students to pursue their happiness and teach them the necessary knowledge and tools to do it could have a great multiplier effect. If therefore, a teacher is so good that their ‘team’ ‘performs’ just 4% better, we could already afford to pay that teacher twice as much. I think 4% is absolutely realistic and that the difference between a bad and a great teacher will be even much more than this. In fact, the economy has grown by 250% over the last generation alone, so to spend 2% of the GDP on teachers instead of just 1% is no problem. Of course, this is about much more than numbers and money, but since this article makes the argument that teachers should be paid much more I just wanted to show how it could work. The return of great education is not just to be measured in GDP, but lower crime rates, a higher likelihood of people living a fulfilling life, a more peaceful society, better science, medicine and technology – the list goes on.
What Is A Good Teacher?
As I’ve explained in detail before (and will delve into more detail in the future) I personally hated almost all of my teachers and I think that with a few exceptions they did a terrible job and were mostly just in the way of me learning things. I have the impression that most teachers walk into school just teaching what they have to teach, like an accountant having to do his or her balance sheets – that’s what I call two-dimensional thinking. However, we need teachers to go into teaching with an attitude to want to push ahead, to push their students ahead, just like managers don’t go into work in the morning just finishing a mere to-do list.
Perhaps the ideal teacher would be a mix between Carl Sagan, Tony Robins and my grandmother – someone with the knowledge of a scientist, the attitude of an athlete and the warmth as well as energy to connect with students and to get them interested. A great teacher knows how to convey knowledge effectively, how to unleash young people’s potential and how to support them in the right way. I remember one truly great teacher, a Professor during my undergrad years who would jump around screaming in his Iranian accent “my grandmother taught me this and it’s the most important thing you will ever hear”. He made us laugh; pay attention and his learning materials were amazing. While I skipped 90% of my classes at university, he made me look forward to his lectures. I dare claim that if all teachers were like that we would live in a very different world, a world that is better by more than just the 1% it would cost to increase their pay. But what do outstanding teachers get? A “best teacher” award. If we gave ‘best manager’ awards to the best managers our economy would be so f*cked.
Of course, just paying teachers twice their salary won’t automatically change the world. They still need to be people who love to teach and work with kids or adolescents. They also have to actually perform at the level of people making that much money, like managers, and should receive an excellent education and training themselves. Teachers that “manage” a “team” of 25 students a year really well and make that “team” “outperform” should get a bonus, just like managers. Those that just show up and tell you what is written in a book or slides you can read yourself, who can’t keep kids in check and who can’t inspire them should not be protected. It’s not fine to not do a great job as a teacher, just like it wouldn’t be fine to not do a great job as a doctor or manager.
It simply cannot be that two thirds of 8th graders are not proficient in reading and math (4). How is that even possible? The standard in the 21st century should be that every child understands the scientific method and humanism, not just the ability to read – that’s embarrassing. And the people who we, as society and tax-payers, pay to take care of this are obviously not good enough.
The fault doesn’t lie with teachers themselves, however, but with the education system. It is locked-in. I explain in more detail what that means here, but essentially it means that no party really has a big incentive to change or do anything differently. While some teachers just want to be great teachers, as a whole the 3.6 million teachers have little reason to perform an extraordinary job for average pay. Schools won’t admit that teachers could be much better and discredit themselves. And so on. With doctors, for example, it’s very different. We are willing to pay them a lot, because when we need them we really need them. Hospitals will fire bad doctors.
So Teachers Should Be Valued Like Managers, But How?
This would all be a really complicated thing to do, and just throwing money at the problem is certainly no easy solution. The entire population needs to become more educated, including parents and teachers themselves so they can be better teachers in the first place. But since there are literally people you can pay to educate people, i.e. teachers, this is where we have to start.
To break this lock-in I mentioned above and the vicious cycle of many different factors (b) we need the government to step in. To improve the key input of education – teachers – they need to become better and for that they need to be paid more, along with better training, resources etc. The government has to initiate this change and also incur the initial cost. Of course, to pay all teachers double over night would be extremely expensive, i.e. over 5% of the federal expenditure of the US (c) (though just about 1% of GDP), but this could be done gradually. One percent of the GDP or 5% of the federal expenditure, $210bn in absolute terms, is not a big deal once the economy has grown by an additional percent and therefore also the budget ($210bn). Even just increasing teacher’s pay by 20%, and in turn toughening their training; performance requirements etc. would be a great start in the short- to mid-term. The point is, teachers have the most important job in our entire economy and society and they should not be paid average income but paid like a manager and in turn also perform like managers.
To realize this, we need to zoom out of how we usually look at things and how we are used to them (what I call the two-dimensional world). This is exactly the purpose of this project, to find the most promising and relevant ways to improve the world. Especially to envision how things could be in an optimal case (a Utopia) and what could have the greatest multiplier effect, which will pay off for you personally, makes you realize that the perhaps biggest hole where potential is lost, is that of teachers not being treated like they are the most important job.
References:
- Teacher Trends. Available online at: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28
- How much (or little) teachers earn — state by state. Available online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/03/05/how-much-or-little-teachers-earn-state-by-state/
- Police Patrol Officer Salaries. Available online at: https://www1.salary.com/Police-Officer-Salary.html
- 65% of Public School 8th Graders Not Proficient in Reading; 67% Not Proficient in Math. Available online at: 4. https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/65-public-school-8th-graders-not-proficient-reading-67-not-proficient
Footnotes:
a. We have to take into consideration the real wages did not grow as much as 2-3% for many people over the last ten or fifteen years, but the point still holds. Especially people with better educated have indeed experienced a big rise in income.
b. Of course, the reason why Scandinavians are better educated is not something that can be copied with higher pay for teachers alone. In socio-economically disadvantages areas such as Stockton, US, it would be a lot to expect people who grew up there and had a suboptimal upbringing themselves. people won’t be as likely to be great teachers if their own upbringing was not that great, Here we can be skeptical and say that it’s impossible to expect from people who didn’t have the best up-bringing themselves, e.g. in places like Stockton, to go through tough training and then perform on the level like managers. But then it does work with police officers, even in places like Stockton – they go through a rough training regiment and have to perform professionally (with exceptions) under high-pressure situations – and they’re paid even less than teachers ($53,208 (Reference 3)).
c. The federal expenditure of the US in 2016 were $4.1tn. To pay 3.6 million teachers twice their salary: 3,600,000 * $58,353 ≈ $210bn, which is around 5% of the federal expenditure.
Generation Utopia 