Today’s Breakfast Club 5:30 tweet chat topic is, “The new President appoints you Sec. of Education. What’s the first thing you do?”
As a “I’m queen of the world,” question, it’s easy. I’d quadruple the salaries of teachers.
As a “this is real” question, it’s not so easy. Because I’d have to figure out the budgetary requirements for quadrupling the salaries of teachers.
Regardless, I think the extreme salary bump could do the trick.
Teacher Salaries x 4
Why I think it will work…
I know that teacher salaries in other (more successful) countries is super high. Higher than engineers, for instance.
Which gives us indication that it may work.
Apart from that, let’s consider what happens when you have high salaries in something.
- Good teachers will be motivated (or considerably less de-motivated)
- Bad teachers (yes, there are some) will be motivated and might become good
- People in industry who’ve long dreamed of teaching will be motivated to do it.
- People in industry who turn out to be good teachers, will replace bad teachers (those that didn’t turn to good teachers)
- People in industry who turn out to be bad teachers will go back to their industry jobs.
The end result will be that we’ll have tons of good teachers that we can KEEP as teachers. They won’t run off to other fields because they have to starve to be a teacher.
Furthermore, if we bring tons of non-academic people into the teaching field, we’ll also have diversity in thinking. And we can push out the “that’s just the way it’s done” attitude.
So what do you think?
Is this a reasonable solution? Am I nuts? Should I be kept away from the position of Secretary of Education? Or might my ideas have merit?
Share your thoughts in the comments, on Twitter or Facebook!
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