Olivia Barr, Chapter 2, Question 5

The issue of how to make the pay of teachers work as incentive to be a teacher is rather controversial. I think the pay of teachers is important, and thus a subject of controversy, because good teachers, and education are paramount in the future success of our nation, which leads to people having very strong opinions about the solution to the problem. The pay of teachers is often low, and generally unrelated to the skill of the teacher, thus there is very low incentive to be a teacher, outside of altruism, or an obligatory feeling about neutering the minds of youth for the future success of your nation. This is a tricky topic, because it has been found that the smartest students do not tend to major in education, and those who go against the tendency, and decide to major in education most often are the ones who actually never go on to be teachers. This is because top students often are interested in making a lot of money, because if you could be an anesthesiologist and make about $350k a year, or be a teacher making an average of less than $60k per year, it would be outside your rational self interest to be a teacher. Furthermore, once someone becomes a teacher, there is little incentive to continue being a teacher because there is little relation between teacher quality and pay; this leads to the good teachers quitting to earn more money, and the bad teachers, continuing to be bad teachers, and make the same amount of money. I think the government needs to create, and implement, a solution to this problem because quality education is one of the most important building blocks for the continued success of the United States, as well as the rest of the world.