Life & Living:  A Good Read – Class Warfare by Steve Brill.  Current Events:  We Need More Exceptional Teachers.  #Education

I really enjoy Brill’s books.  Good writing, credible content, thoughtful analysis, and important topics.  (And, he actually responded to an email I sent him, and did so in under 24 hours!)

Class Warfare treats the dismal state of the public education system in the US and decades of efforts to improve it.

My Take:

In short, exceptional teachers are the silver bullet.  (If there is a villain, it’s us because we haven’t insisted on the US being the best in world at public education … and/or teacher unions, unions not union members.)

Exceptional teachers are people who:  are exceptionally talented, work exceptionally hard and long-hours, are exceptionally committed to their students’ success, and genuinely passionate about their work.  (I had several exceptional teachers and they significantly changed my life’s arc for the better.)

Exceptional teachers can and do overcome all kinds of barriers and impediments:  impoverished students … the “bad” communities that surround them … the crappy school infrastructure they try to learn in … the resources we provide them (like books!) … etc. 

Exceptional teachers produce superior results:  standardized test scores and graduation rates. And they do so when side-by-side with other teachers in the same school buildings and teaching students from the same communities.

A higher % or teachers in private and public charter schools are exceptional.  A lower % in traditional public schools.

To fix the public education system, we need to attract, retain, and incent a big number of exceptional teachers.  People who are very smart, who have grit, and who are willing to work long hours.  Just like people who work at the most demanding jobs in the most demanding law, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, etc. firms.

There are 3.2M public school teachers in the US.  [Source:  Statista] 

Assume 10% are already exceptional and suppose we want to have another 10% or 320K exceptionals.

Altruism or love for the profession will not get us there.  We need to raise salaries for exceptional teachers.

Here are some statistics on salaries in the US for some professions.  [Source: talent.com]

                                                Median            Experienced

Teacher                                   $  43K              $  73K

Engineer                                 $107K              $154K

Family Practice Doctor           $195K              $234K

Lawyer                                    $105K              $166K

MBA                                        $  87K              $127K

What’s the annual bill for raising salaries of 620K teachers (current and additional exceptionals) … by $70K (roughly competitive with engineers, lawyers, and MBAs)?  About $43B annually.

Can we afford that?  Sure.  And if we want to sustain US economic prosperity and progress and US social progress, we must afford that.

Federal, state, and local spending on K-12 public education is about $800B annually.  [Source:  educationdata.org]

In 50 years of work in the private and public sectors, I never ever saw a budget that didn’t have 10% of “fat” (which could be cut or re-directed with no impact on results). 

So, find $43B of “fat” and pay exceptional teachers more, a lot more.  Attract, retain, and incent the exceptionals.