The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers

[JangoSteve]

One of the interesting things they're saying in this article is that you can tell from test scores when a given kindergarten teacher is very effective, in that their class will perform well above the average (or at least improve at a rate well above the average improvement). However, then in junior high to high school, those test scores then fall back in-line with the average. But then after that, when the class of people enter adulthood, the difference resurfaces in the form of higher wages. That seems to beg the question, are good junior high teachers less effective than good kindergarten teachers (or even effective at all)? We need more data!

[derefr]

Perhaps the material taught/tested in high school just isn't correlated as highly with success in the workplace as a good early-childhood education is.

[sethg]

My understanding is that a lot of good teachers would rather have more autonomy in their jobs than more money.

My son’s first preschool teacher was superb, because she paid enough attention to the kids to know when not to follow the Ph.D.-approved paint-by-numbers curriculum that was mandated by the school. Her contract didn’t get renewed (since she was a new teacher, she had no kind of tenure protection).

[brianm]

Speaking as an ex-teacher, more money is also direly needed.

[roel_v]

I don't believe the conclusion that excellent teachers should be paid 320k per child can follow from the premises in the article. You don't pay for the full value something adds. Otherwise, by definition, you might as well just not buy it and be in the same position. You pay what the market will bear, which for publicly-funded teachers is what we pay them now.

[yummyfajitas]

The market might even bear less than what we pay now - due to teachers unions, we can't find out.

[icono]

There's a point where diminishing returns sets in. My guess is that anything over 140k a year would result in the same, if not, lower test scores. Read the first chapter of Dan Ariely's book: The Upside of Irrationality. Like so many best selling authors, he's simply taking research and dumbing it down for everyone else to consume.

[ZeroGravitas]

It's hard to tell from the article but is the quality of kindergarten teachers being measured by the increase in test scores between entry and exit a year later? And are the kids grouped so that the teacher is correlated with the average of their classes future performance, or is it just individuals that do well (or at least improve most) at kindergarten that are doing well later.

That seems all kinds of dubious to me, but I suppose all research, good or bad, does once filtered via the media.

[brianbreslin]

This makes sense for a variety of reasons: 1. Kindergarten is the first formal educational experience most children are exposed to. 2. The more experienced/effective the teacher, the better the foundation the students will develop. 3. The better the foundation, the better prepared they will be at every level later on.

The middle school issue could use more details as to the variables in play there.

[hugh3]

If early learning experiences are that important, then surely the best investment you can make in your child's future is to have one parent stay home and teach them stuff for the first five years of their lives before they get shipped off to kindergarten, rather than shipping 'em off to daycare while both parents work?

I'm shocked by the number of children who show up to kindergarten unable to read.

[Tichy]

Interesting, but not quite satisfying. For example judging a teacher just based on one random class seems insufficient, even if the class consists of random students. There might still be random factors that make a class good or bad, for example some individuals that are trouble makers and infect the whole class. So one would have to study the performance across several random classes.

[dgabriel]

I believe they did that in this study. It's not a single class, but many classes.