Teacher Quality

The other day I read an interesting report about teacher quality in the US.  The upshot is that while the most successful education systems in the world (such as in Finland, Korea, and Singapore) routinely recruit some of the most talented college graduates into the teaching profession, in the US about 47% of teachers are in the bottom third of their college class.  Programs like Teach for America that attempt to recruit more highly qualified teaching candidates often have high rates of turnover, which suggests that there may be a tradeoff between qualifications and experience.

I think the obvious reason that the best students don't become teachers is that the profession doesn't offer much in terms of financial opportunity.  Highly intelligent and qualified teachers will generally be paid the same low rate as the mediocre ones.  One interesting point made by the report was that increasing economic freedom for women has been detrimental to the teaching profession.  It used to be the case that teaching was one of the few options available to ambitious and bright young women.  These days they can basically do whatever they want, so kids no longer benefit from patriarchal oppression.

All the Devils are Here

I just finished reading the book All the Devils are Here, an account of what caused the housing and financial crisis.  The basic message was that mortgage fraud became widespread because borrowers were encouraged by mortgage originators, who were encouraged by investment bankers, to ignore lending guidelines.  Inevitably, this lead to huge numbers of mortgages being created that had no chance of being repaid.  Most of the new subprime mortgages were people refinancing old mortgages that they couldn't afford.

Why did investment bankers encourage this?  Because they cold get ratings agencies (like Moody's, Standard and Poor's, and Fitch's) to give packages of mortgages AAA ratings.  That is, based on a few statistical tricks, they declared that the mortgages were as safe as US Treasury bonds.  Once they mortgages had the AAA stamp, unsophisticated investors (and many who thought they were sophisticated) bought billions upon billions of dollars worth.

Interestingly enough, the very smartest investors (such as Goldmand Sachs and John Paulson) made billions by betting against these supposedly AAA mortgages in a very clever manner.  While many other Wall Street firms were destroyed by the crisis and many investors were wiped out, it seems as if most of the people actually responsible for the madness made out fine with the billions of dollars in salaries and bonuses they made during the run up.  This includes everyone from fraudulent borrowers and unethical originators to shady Wall Street traders and clueless CEO's.  Everyone made out fine, except of course the investors and taxpayers.

Last night I was thinking about how arbitrary it is that some people who find themselves at the "right" place at the right time can end up making tens or hundreds of millions of dollars engaging in work that essentially ruined the economy.  Isn't there some kind of karma that will catch up to them?  If I could go back and, instead of joining the Air Force, become a trader on Wall Street and make millions screwing over the world would I do it?  The questions make me think carefully about what it is that I really want in life.

Pure and Simple Amnesty

The Utah State Legislature has passed an immigration bill (HB 116) which combined enforcement measures with a guest worker program.  I don't think the bill is perfect.  No state can really come up with a comprehensive immigration package that works without reform on the federal level.  But at least it is an attempt to balance respect for the rule of law with respect for the plight of immigrants and the needs of Utah businesses.  Even the NY Times is impressed.

I knew that I would like at least some parts of the bill when Rep. Chris Herrod declared that it was nothing but "pure and simple amnesty."  There is that word again, but this time it is music to my ears as it refers to an actual bill passed by Utah legislature.

Class Size and Teacher Pay

Since my last post I have come across a few more sources that can shed light on the issue of teacher pay and class size.

First, consider this Bill Gates op-ed in the Washington Post.  He contends that the main reason education costs have been skyrocketing is that we have a higher teacher/student ratio.  This may be counter to what we have thought, and probably isn't true everywhere, but I don't doubt that it is at least partly true.  Think about it this way, education budgets mostly go toward teacher salaries.  If the cost per student goes up, it is mainly because either we are paying teachers more or we have more teachers per student.  In high spending districts, both are probably true (also, there is the possibility that we have more administrators per student).

Gates argues that we should allow the best teachers to take on more students for more pay. Not everyone is enamored with this proposition.  One commenter makes the interesting point that virtually everyone agrees with the idea of reducing class size.  It is an easier sell to reduce class size than to increase teacher pay.  Gates refers to a study wherein 83% of teachers stated they would be willing to take on more students for more pay.  The actual report he refers to is here.  Note that the choice they are given is between having two extra students in each class and $5,000 in additional pay.  This amounts to about $70 per student per week.  This is considerably more than the $10 offer mentioned by my colleague.  Also of interest in the report is that 83% of teachers oppose merit pay.

$5,000 may seem like a lot for just two students.  But consider that even Utah spends about $6,000 a year per student.  In some states it is over $15,000.  Let's assume that the deal means a teacher has accept two more students in every class.  In a state with high education spending like NY, a teacher who accepts the two new students would only be getting 1/6th of the average cost the student places on the system.

Of course, it doesn't really make sense to ask whether a teacher would accept two additional students if we don't specify a starting point.  For simplicity, let's start at zero.  A teacher's entire salary could depend on the number of students they teach.  The average class size in the US is about 23 students, so the average teacher would make $57,500.  Doesn't seem completely irrational.  If teachers pay were calculated this way, I wonder where they would stop.  Would teachers prefer to teach classes of 200 students?  I bet you would get some pretty dang qualified teachers if you made them an offer of $500,000 per year but at that point the benefits would probably be offset by the lack individual attention.