A fundamental tenet of economics is that humans are generally rational, self-interested actors. It’s no surprise, then, that many of America’s best and brightest students are choosing to study disciplines and pursue careers in industries that will move them forward on a path of financial independence and success. In fact, many students are willing to major in subjects just for the very chance of making the big bucks.
Five years after the financial crisis and its subsequent recession ravaged the financial sector, thousands of pink slips have been doled out to Wall Street financiers. Still, finance remains one of the most popular majors on college campuses across the country. Similarly, despite the rising cost of law school, falling income of lawyers, dismal job prospects for new law school grads and a strongly worded warning by the American Bar Association urging prospective law students to reconsider going to law school, recent college graduates continue to matriculate in law schools in massive proportions.
What many of the nation’s top students are not choosing to pursue careers in is education. To be sure, there are exceptionally intelligent students who plan on becoming teachers. But many of America’s brightest are choosing other careers for one simple reason: financial self-interest.
At a time when America needs highly competent, well-qualified teachers more than ever, states across the nation are penalizing, not incentivizing, a career in education by defunding their education systems, slashing teacher salaries and laying off myriad educators. In 2009, 74 countries took part in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program for International Student Assessment test. America’s performance underwhelmed. Of the 74 participating countries, the United States ranked 23rd in science and 31st in math, which is why President Barack Obama has called improving the nation’s education system this generation’s Sputnik moment.
A unifying theme among the countries that performed best on the test has emerged: they value their teachers, pay them well and expect them to perform at the highest level. Nevertheless, the best teachers in America are rarely, if ever, paid as handsomely as top performers in other professional fields. What’s more, American teachers are rarely held as accountable for their performance as lawyers or financiers.
If America wants to improve teacher performance and close the gap between its educational attainment and that of top performing countries, it should start by incentivizing a career in teaching by making teacher salaries competitive and making the education industry commensurately competitive.
Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of top-tier students willing to work in education to make a difference. Teach for America—a non-profit organization that places recent college graduates in underserved schools—accepted just 12 percent of the more than 46,000 applicants in 2010. But many of the Teach for America teachers, who earn the same salary as other teachers in their district, move on to more profitable endeavors after fulfilling their two-year commitment to teaching. If teachers were paid a salary that was competitive with other professional careers, many more of the nation’s smartest and most qualified students would choose careers in teaching.
Of course, increased salary should not come without increased responsibility. In no professional career other than teaching does a worker’s performance become quasi-irrelevant after just of a few years on the job. Tenure must be eliminated, allowing teachers to be judged and compensated based on their performance, not their seniority.
Merit-based pay has long been advocated as a way to increase teacher performance, citing pilot programs that have shown increased teacher effectiveness. But the greatest potential benefit of merit-based pay for educators has been largely overlooked: better, more qualified students who could be attracted to the field by competitive pay.
Cynics, to be sure, will denounce a merit-based plan as quixotic in an era when state legislators are slashing teachers’ salaries and benefits. But an improved education system would more than pay for itself. According to a study conducted by Eric Hanushek, a Stanford economist, replacing the bottom eight to 12 percent of teachers in terms of effectiveness with average teachers could add 50 trillion dollars to the nation’s output between 2010 and 2080. To put that number into perspective, the study cites the loss in American economic output from the Great Recession, which was around $3 trillion.
If we want to elevate our nation’s test scores and its economic productivity, it seems that we must first elevate the profession of teaching.
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