This NPR (National Propaganda Radio), podcast suggests ways to “quantify” how much a teacher is worth. The podcast was based on this research. A few points:
a good teacher’s contribution to the economy could be as much as a half a million dollars per year.
Or more specifically, a teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and proportionately higher with larger class sizes.
Alternatively, replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers could move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings with a present value of $100 trillion.
What are the flaws in their approach?
What is the Austrian response to “how much is a teacher worth”?
How would a teacher find their worth in a free market?
I believe it would be the market that would determine the value of the teachers services..
If everyone in school over the next few years strived to be teachers, we’d have too many shortly after. Higher supply means lower wages. Low wages would push a some out, creating an (ever adapting) equilibrium (the market rate) for the ‘teacher-market’
Think I got that right…
Personally, I want to know where these ballin’ ass teachers who contribute 400 grand to the economy are.
Also, even if we took the numbers at face value, assuming 30 kids to a classroom at 5 classes a day for 150 students. That is only $2666.66 per student that a teacher contributes.
It costs $5 to download a pdf of the research paper, so I don’t know how they got these numbers. With that being said, one cannot use this: “a good teacher’s contribution to the economy could be as much as a half a million dollars per year” to make claims like this: “replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers could move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings with a present value of $100 trillion.”
mikascusetts: What about the parents who can’t afford filet minon? Should the state provide public steakhouses, or is steak not a “human right?”
I appreciate the filet mignon example. The challenge in getting through the logic of this topic is that folks appear to heavily invested in the “free” public educational system, and see no other way of “fairly” educating people.
By any chance, does anyone know of any other (more contemporary) studies similar the one Rockwell cited as private schools costing less than public schools:
“LOL. My response “what about the kids/parents that can’t afford to go to school?” is what I usually get when talking about a free market in education.”
the only way to build a government school for them is to steal money from others. and honestly, working at a Title I school, I see some students who would not have the means, and hate coming to school and disrupt classes. But the state forces me to keep them in my class to disrupt it.
I also see alot of students pick up their free lunches only to throw them in the trash, but keep the drink. In other words, they literally have to get a lunch they don’t want, throw it in the trash, just to get a free drink. That is how inefficient the government is at providing education.
If we did to restaurants what we do to education it would go something like this:
All restaurants are controlled by the government. You are only allowed to goto the restaurant closest to your house. You can only pick up food from these restaurants at certain days and certain times. Everyone has to go pick up the food at the same time, so there will always be huge lines of parents in cars waiting to pick up the food. People have to stay in the restaurant for a certain amount of time and leave at the exact time. So there is a huge line of people trying to leave the restaurant as well.
leave all that nonsense behind, stay on topic and imagine how free markets would respond to people’s desire to learn…what would you do with your money to help teach your child?
They are only looking at one side of it. How much does a state-financed teacher cost society in present value in the same amount of time? Probably more than $400.000. The resources that are used to overpay teachers can’t be used to build factories and make society richer. Since the economy grows exponentially, the marginal loss compounds over time. We are talking about the amount of time a student would produce earnings, so the losses would be a lot.
Secondly, they are assuming that no education would take place without state schooling. The reality is that compulsory schooling keeps people from learning and crowds out open source education. State teachers are probably a loss to society, even if they were free.
During the Middle Ages the greatest and most famous European universities (Bologna, Salerno, Salamanca etc) were very “market oriented” as far as teachers were concerned. Students paid the teacher’s salary and, at the end of the accademic year, decided the teacher’s fate. A poor teacher was sure to lose his job while a university managing to obtain the services of a great scholar was sure to see students flock to it. We may be led to believe students were wont to choose teachers that would “go easy” on them but this was not the case. Students chose skilled teachers that could give them better skills. Even a great scholar with poor teaching skills was much better off seeking the patronage of the Church or of the Crown: he may have known everything about the Fathers of the Church but what good he was if he could not pass his knowledge on to his students?
Morale: a teacher is, like any other worker, worth as much as the market says.
“leave all that nonsense behind, stay on topic and imagine how free markets would respond to people’s desire to learn.”
To play devil’s advocate, how would a free market respond to people’s desire to learn that can’t afford to go to school? Or to phrase the question another way, take the viewpoint of an entrepreneur. What entrepreneurial feats would you understake that meets the needs of the market of “affordable” education, whilst making a profit?
the same way poor people get into universities: apply for scholarships, get involved in programs, private charities etc. Private church schools even offer aid in return for volunteer work for the church. Military schools offer finiancial aid for the poor students. Some prep schools offer free admission for an outstanding essay or an individual’s willingness to learn