“we should be firing the bad teachers and hiring good ones”. requires school districts to be willing to pay for good teachers and able to tell what they are (quite hard). Also requires that you have enough teachers in the first place, (most districts feel they have too few). It also seems paradoxical, because the average teacher cannot be better than average (people forget averages can change over time). It also has the social problem that you have to say “some respected people are just bad at their job”, which is hard.
That is a two axis intervention, and skill/price might not be that elastic.
You also can’t hire partial teachers, so there is an integer problem where firing one teacher might mean a significant rise in class sizes.
If you have 100 students and 4 teachers, for a 1:25 ratio (which is fairly good), this leads to a minimum raise of 33% and a a ratio of 1:33 (average to bad). This better teacher now needs to split their attention among 8 more students, which is really hard.
Since you need teachers for each grade, this integer problem is a big deal, as often even in large schools there are only 2-3 teachers per school per grade or per subject, even at medium to large schools, and shuffling students between schools is highly disruptive and unpopular.
To hire better teachers, total compensation must probably increase. (especially including hiring expensive and fights with the union).
We should spend more money on teachers is a defensible conclusion (there seems to be a total personnel shortage as well), and we would hope that good teacher supply is elastic. If it is not, competing for good teachers is a bad global intervention.
“we should be firing the bad teachers and hiring good ones”. requires school districts to be willing to pay for good teachers and able to tell what they are (quite hard). Also requires that you have enough teachers in the first place, (most districts feel they have too few). It also seems paradoxical, because the average teacher cannot be better than average (people forget averages can change over time). It also has the social problem that you have to say “some respected people are just bad at their job”, which is hard.
Fewer but better teachers. Paid more. Larger class sizes. Same budget.
That is a two axis intervention, and skill/price might not be that elastic.
You also can’t hire partial teachers, so there is an integer problem where firing one teacher might mean a significant rise in class sizes.
If you have 100 students and 4 teachers, for a 1:25 ratio (which is fairly good), this leads to a minimum raise of 33% and a a ratio of 1:33 (average to bad). This better teacher now needs to split their attention among 8 more students, which is really hard.
Since you need teachers for each grade, this integer problem is a big deal, as often even in large schools there are only 2-3 teachers per school per grade or per subject, even at medium to large schools, and shuffling students between schools is highly disruptive and unpopular.
To hire better teachers, total compensation must probably increase. (especially including hiring expensive and fights with the union).
We should spend more money on teachers is a defensible conclusion (there seems to be a total personnel shortage as well), and we would hope that good teacher supply is elastic. If it is not, competing for good teachers is a bad global intervention.