Is a Good Teacher Worth $400,000?
Over the course of a school year, a good teacher produces $400,000 more in future earnings for a class of 20 students than an average teacher. What's more, replacing the worst-performing five to eight percent of teachers with average teachers could catapult the U.S. to near the top of international math and science rankings, padding GDP by $100 trillion and generating returns that dwarf "the discussions of U.S. economic stimulus packages related to the 2008 recession ($1 trillion)."
These are the findings of a National Bureau of Economic Research study by Stanford's Eric Hanushek, which investigates the interplay between teacher effectiveness and the economic impact of higher student achievement, specifically in terms of test scores.
Hanushek notes that one challenge his paper doesn't tackle is how to link pay to effectiveness; instead, the research "simply suggests that the economically appropriate rewards for particularly effective teachers in the context of a performance pay plan could be very large."
How are commentators receiving the findings?
- There Are Two Ways to Interpret This Data, argues Adam Ozimek at Modeled Behavior. Studies like this show that teachers are valuable and that we should raise wages to attract better talent. But:
If good teachers are very valuable, then bad teachers are very costly. This means we should be willing to pay more for good teachers, but it also increases the benefit of getting rid of bad teachers and ensuring we have a system that can do that. After all,
