
The $4 Million Teacher - muzz
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324635904578639780253571520.html
======
aresant
Based on the headline and the first few paragraphs I was excited to read about
a free market approach to public teaching.

But most of his students are "high-school students looking to boost their
scores on South Korea's version of the SAT."

So is the article really about a $4m/yr teacher?

Or a $4m/yr test prep guru?

Test-prep is a HUGE industry in the USA.

"Princeton Review" alone pulled down ~$150,000,000 in 2012.(1)

John Katzman, a Princeton grad, founded it in 1981.

So we've already tread this right?

And the major criticism of Princeton review and other testing houses is that
they drastically skew the balance of the tests by (a) Giving privileged kids
an unfair advantage (b) Damaging the test integrity which is designed to find
bright kids, not just "well prepared for this one day" kids.

So that's not really that unique and, in fact, we've got a long history of how
this type of market has under-served the US' own system.

But great headline, got me to click.

(1)
[http://www.wbjournal.com/article/20100830/PRINTEDITION/30830...](http://www.wbjournal.com/article/20100830/PRINTEDITION/308309977/princeton-
review-bets-on-online-learning--framingham-based-company-needs-recent-
acquisition-to-help-it-reach-profitability)

~~~
jessriedel
Concurring with yummyfajita, test prep courses don't have too much impact:

> On average students with private tutors improve their math scores by 19
> points more than those students without private tutors. The effect is less
> on the verbal section, where having a private tutor only improves scores on
> average by seven points. Taking a commercial course has a similarly large
> effect on math scores, improving them on average by 17 points, and has the
> largest effect on verbal scores, improving them on average by 13 points.

[http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/Briggs_Theeffectofadmissionst...](http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/Briggs_Theeffectofadmissionstestpreparation.pdf)

These differences (~15 points on a test with a standard deviation of 100
points) are rather small compared to the huge gaps between different socio-
economic and racial backgrounds (~100 points between rich and poor). Probably
worth the boost if you have the money, though.

~~~
cynicalkane
The way you get better at something is with deliberate, difficult practice,
and deep inquiry. When I was in high school preparing for the SAT I found this
was the opposite of how most test prep worked.

I found one book--called something like SAT 1600, which was the max at the
time--that talked about how test makers try to assess you, and how questions
are constructed. The drill questions were very hard and came with an
explanation of how the questions worked. Taking a practice test before and
after the book my score went up by over 100 points. It got to the point where
I could usually answer a math problem by guessing what the answer "should" be,
based on how the question was built, and then just work backwards to verify
the answer.

But most test prep was boring drills together with strategies like "use the
process of elimination." Yeah, duh. That sort of brain-switched-off busywork
is the common pattern in test prep and, more broadly, American education.

~~~
mopedDreams
I agree. And isn't the idea of a test to find the people that are best a doing
something. It doesn't really matter how much preparation goes into it.

So maybe someone that works really hard to be better than others at something
is more valuable than someone who is naturally bright?

For example - a naturally bright lawyer isn't as good as a 'good' lawyer that
tries really hard to be the best. Being good at a test shows that you'll be
good at whatever the test is trying to find - no matter how this is achieved.

------
clarky07
I might get hammered for this, but I really don't think teachers are
significantly underpaid. I say this as someone married to a teacher.
Considering that they only work 9 months a year and generally have good
benefits, I'm not convinced they should be getting paid significantly more.
Take an average salary of around 30-35k and /.75 (9 of 12 months) and it
becomes $40,000 - $46,667 a year. Add into that good retirement and great
healthcare, it just doesn't seem that unreasonable to me.

It's unreasonable to compare a salary from a job working 9 months a year to
another profession that works 12 months a year. "Well it's hard, if you had to
deal with these kids you'd need a few months off too." Yeah, and that's why I
didn't become a teacher. You chose this knowing all the pros and cons. Pro -
only work 9 months a year Con - only get paid for 9 months a year

~~~
byoung2
How many hours are spent outside of class preparing lessons, grading papers,
staff meetings, parent conferences, etc.? This reduces the hourly rate
somewhat.

~~~
rayiner
The amount of class time per week in our county is ~30. So even if they spend
15 hours a week outside of class on those things, that's a 45 hour work week,
very consistent with that of other white collar workers making that kind of
money.

Teachers get paid extremely well in most larger cities. In Atlanta, Chicago,
Philadelphia, Houston, and New York, starting salaries are in the $40-45k/year
range with a bachelors. This might seem low to people on this board accustomed
to Silicon Valley pay scales, but it's substantially above average for liberal
arts majors. When I graduated college in Atlanta in 2007, the going rate for a
fresh BA in white collar professional job (say in the accounting department of
a company) was $35k. Teachers were starting at $40k+.

Also, the benefits cannot be ignored. Good health insurance and a pension
contribution are extravagant benefits for young college graduates in the
Millennial generation. They easily add $15-20k/year to total compensation.

~~~
jacalata
so the starting salary is decent - where does it top out for our new grad
accountant, and for our new teacher? Also, many teachers are not liberal arts
majors; I have several teacher friends who are math/science majors with an
M.Ed or whatever it is - and a couple programmer friends who are ex-teacher
math majors, and the career switch was certainly influenced by the option to
easily double their income.

~~~
rayiner
In most places, teachers will top out at $70-80k if they stay teachers and
don't move into administration, which is consistent with what that accounting
grad would make in the payroll or HR department of a company. Note that at
that point, the benefits become even more significant. Teachers often have
healthcare plans that cover their family members, where they pay a lower
portion of premiums, etc. They get large pension contributions and often get
healthcare benefits in retirement, which is rare in the private sector.

Math/pure science majors aren't worth anything. There is a huge oversupply of
people with say biology or chemistry degrees. In the private sector, a biology
major is lucky to start at $35k/year.

Obviously you can dramatically increase your salary by acquiring programming
skills and going into software development, but that's not unique to teachers.
Programmers make way more than pretty much every other field you'd find
yourself in after getting a non-engineering bachelors degree, except maybe
economics.

~~~
dylangs1030
rayiner, how is it consistent with the rest of what you're saying that
math/science degrees are worthless?

Understand, I acknowledge you might have more knowledge/experience on this,
I'm just skeptical. I would think - and the tone of your argument seems to
posit - that it matters more what you decide to do with that degree than what
degree you have.

Is it really worthless to have a good math degree if you become a quant? I
understand market oversaturation, but that could be said of almost every
degree, moreso liberal arts.

~~~
rayiner
There are lots of jobs that will pay $60-$120k starting salary for people with
math/science degrees, mainly finance and management consulting. But those jobs
are open to very few of the huge numbers of people that graduate each year
with math and pure science degrees. Those companies are looking for people
with top grades from top schools.

But your typical teacher doesn't have a 3.8 at Dartmouth, and the option to go
make $80k/year as an energy trader at a major power company. They've got a 3.4
at the local second-tier school. Recruiters at those jobs won't even read
these peoples' resumes. Their alternatives to teaching are entry-level jobs at
laboratories. The average starting salary of a biology/life sciences major
nationwide in 2010 was $33k: [http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/11/college-
degrees-best-salari...](http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/11/college-degrees-best-
salaries-leadership-careers-jobs.html). If you throw in math and physics,
which pull the averages up, the average for the math/sciences category is
$42k, not that much better social sciences at $37k:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/04/15/college-
de...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/04/15/college-degrees-with-
the-highest-starting-salaries-3).

~~~
dylangs1030
Ah I understand what you're saying now. Thanks for the clarification :)

------
joe_the_user
Before anyone gets excited, this is following labor treads throughout the
world; a few "rock stars" and many more lower paid people. You can see this in
law, medicine, business, academia and so-forth.

The US has very highly paid educators too. The only difference is they
generally don't set foot in the class but rather serve as consultants ... on
how schools can reduced average teacher pay and imposed pay-for-performance
(among other things). This was the case for Beverly Hall, who created the
local model for No Child Left Behind, sold it on a national level and was
eventually arrested for falsifying the system.

Her report on Atlanta School's local program which NCLB (No Child Left Behind)
emulated:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Hwl55bH...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Hwl55bHttcwJ:www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/nclb/Beverly_Hall
--Testimony.pdf+&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a)

Her arrest: [http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57577688/ex-atlanta-
scho...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57577688/ex-atlanta-schools-
chief-beverly-hall-posts-bond-on-cheating-charges/)

Edit: And another posters mentions, this isn't a "teacher" in the conventional
sense of the word either but a slightly more hands-on testing-guru. So we can
pretty much move along now...

~~~
rdouble
Maybe someday one of those consultants will package an approach based on
raising the bar on salary and teacher/student performance moderately and call
it "Moneyball Education" and it will finally take off. It will have a better
chance of success if it's already been approved by ESPN.

~~~
yummyfajitas
This approach already exists - it's called value added modelling + pay for
performance.

Unsurprisingly, it's a political nonstarter due to union opposition.

~~~
Retric
It's a non starter because it's generally poorly implemented and not linked it
an increased budget.

Issue 1: A kids past performance and out of school issues dramaticly impact
learning independent of the teacher. So teachers in schools in poor areas are
often at a huge disadvantage under most of these systems.

Issue 2: Without an increased budget paying meaningfully more money to great
teachers can significantly reduce the income for new and or average teachers.

Issue 3: It fails to attract talent because it does not increase the all
important starting salary.

PS: Teacher direct compensation is a significant portion of US educational
costs but bumping the minimum starting salary to say 50k is not nearly as
expencive as you might think. Paying new teachers more, reducing seniority
perks which reduces pension obligations and adding incentive based bonuses is
IMO a far better use of funds than the administrative overhead that keeps
increasing over time.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_A kids past performance and out of school issues dramaticly impact learning
independent of the teacher_

A VAM score is (actual score of their students - expected score of
statistically similar students). If a kid has low past performance, his
expected score will be low, and thus the bar is lowered for his teacher.

VAM tends to hurt teachers in top schools far more than those in the bottom
schools due to the ceiling effect - if your students expected score is 97%,
there is no room for them to improve.

As for teacher pay, this is a non-problem. Teachers are overpaid when you
account for pension, job security and summer vacation - as a result, there is
a glut of people attempting to work as teachers, rather than a shortage.

~~~
Retric
Edit (inner city) Poor children don't have consistently poor performance it
gets much worse 8-12th grade than 1-4th. Which is not accounted for by VAM.

Students are not predicted to score 97% school wide due to reversion to the
mean.

As to a teacher glut it's not a question of body's it's a question of quality.
Plenty of people would be CEO of Ford for far less money that does not mean
there over paid.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Poor children don 't have consistently poor performance it gets much worse
8-12th grade than 1-4th. Which is not accounted for by VAM._

This is simply nonsense. How would this fact not be reflected in the mean
performance of students grade 8, income in [$0,$15], race=white, grade 7
percentile in [25%,50%]?

I'm beginning to think that most of the critics of VAM don't even understand
what it does and are merely repeating critiques of blindly measuring raw test
scores.

~~~
Retric
Poor students in _poor areas_ don't have the same performance as poor students
in _average areas._

 _I 'm beginning to think that most of the critics of VAM don't even
understand what it does and are merely repeating critiques of blindly
measuring raw test scores._ And your ignoring the huge statistical significant
difference having an under preforming peer group has on student performance.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Clearly you know vastly more about statistics than I do. Could you explain why
all statisticians involved in education are unable to include this specific
"huge statistical[ly] significant difference" in a predictive model?

I'm also curious - if this effect cannot be included in a model, how can one
demonstrate it's existence in a statistically significant manner?

~~~
Retric
_Could you explain why all statisticians involved in education are unable to
include this specific "huge statistical[ly] significant difference" in a
predictive model?_

They can and do. However, when it comes to teacher pay and student performance
such things are politically untenable. _No Child Left Behind_ does not mean
except for when your peer group is full of truants.

The best evidence for this is actually from tracking randomly assigned edge
cases. Often good schools will accept X numbers of students from another area
and when they pull randomly from the pool of available students it's not hard
to track what's going on and compare crossovers performance with students from
each area that stayed in that area.

------
glesica
I like this idea as a general concept, but I just don't know how well it would
work in the US. Schools in the US are already locally controlled to a great
extent, yet most are still under-funded. If people really wanted to spend more
on education, why don't they vote to raise their own property taxes? If they
think the schools are being run poorly, why don't they get involved with the
school boards and make changes? I realize there are many entrenched interests
here (unions, textbook companies, and many more), but those same entrenched
interests would fight against importing the South Korean system.

I also dislike the idea of kids going to school twice. From what I understand,
research has shown that kids need more free time, not more time sitting in
lectures, at least younger children. Additionally, the SK system seems like it
would double-penalize low-income families since their children often need to
get jobs in high school. So not only can't they afford the best tutors, their
kids wouldn't have time to sleep!

~~~
rayiner
Schools are not underfunded. The U.S spends more per capita on education than
pretty much everyone: [http://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-
world-...](http://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-
infographic), twice as much as South Korea.

~~~
jmduke
This is true, but I think the U.S.' education spending doesn't just go towards
academics but extracurricular activities (sports, the arts, dances/events,
facilities + infrastructure) to an extent further than that of other
countries.

~~~
rayiner
Sports at schools mostly pay for themselves (usually with football subsidizing
all the other ones). Dances and events are usually not paid out of official
school funds, but rather money raised by PTA's. I don't know why U.S.
facilities would cost more than those in other countries.

~~~
rdouble
US schools usually include sports facilities which are very expensive. My
sister moved to Australia, which is about as similar to the US as it gets for
a foreign country, and the schools have no equivalent of a Texas football
stadium or Minnesota hockey arena. I don't think there is any other country
that spends so much on public school facilities.

------
ctdonath
_South Korean 15-year-olds rank No. 2 in the world in reading_

Unmentioned is that written Korean was designed by an accomplished linguist
(around 1500), making it very easy to learn. This in contrast to English, a
bewildering mashup of incompatible spelling & phonetic rules made up by
happenstance.

~~~
argumentum
English bashing is so easy its tiring. There's a _reason_ English is a
"bewildering mashup", because it developed organically taking input from all
around the world. It is quite arguable that this is it's greatest strengths as
a language.

This is due not only to the British Empire but also the fact that they
essentially let language develop on its own. Unlike say, France (which had a
similarly expansive empire), which tightly controlled the French language and
still does to this day.

~~~
Dewie
Yeah, there is a reason English is the way it is. Who said there wasn't?
Saying that 'there is a reason' doesn't really rebut anything (you agreed with
it anyway), and I kind of expected a rebut with the antagonistic opening
sentence.

> , because it developed organically taking input from all around the world.
> It is quite arguable that this is it's greatest strengths as a language.

Having a lot of loanwords is one thing: not having any sane and simple rules
for spelling and phonetics is quite another. If 'organic' spelling is it's
greatest strength, then it seems like a language more suited for spelling
bees# then for communication.

#I doubt you'll find something like a Spanish spelling bee: from what I've
seen of its diction, a Spanish spelling bee would be too trivial. Like making
a competition out of tic-tac-toe.

~~~
argumentum
English is a great language in that it (almost uniquely) decouples rules from
meaning, thus giving it great flexibility. This is in my opinion it's greatest
strength.

The way something becomes an acceptable part of the English language has less
to do with following some arbitrary set of constraints, than what becomes
accepted by actual human beings who use the language to communicate with other
actual human beings.

There are more ways of saying any particular thing in English than most if not
all other languages, and while you may view this as a weakness, I rather
appreciate being able to decide what sounds good on my own.

[https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm)

There is also a larger point to be made. If English was _such_ a hindrance why
is the world like it is today? Language is one of the most important
components of society, so if English really sucked, we'd probably be using
some other language on HN. Please explain why, despite what you consider it's
shortcomings, English is and will be the _lingua franca_ of the world for the
foreseeable future?

My ancestors are from India, and I've visited there from time to time. Anyone
with anything to contribute there speaks English, even if as a second (or
third or fourth) language. If someone doesn't, that person isn't usually
educated or hardly even literate.

Indian languages developed from the same roots as European ones, which is why
the term _Indo-European_ exists#. Yet somehow, amongst all the possibilities,
the most successful Indians use English. There is something to be said for
that.

# [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-
European_languages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages)

~~~
Dewie
> English is a great language in that it (almost uniquely) decouples rules
> from meaning, thus giving it great flexibility. This is in my opinion it's
> greatest strength.

What does this mean?

> The way something becomes an acceptable part of the English language has
> less to do with following some arbitrary set of constraints, than what
> becomes accepted by actual human beings who use the language to communicate
> with other actual human beings.

You mean the way most languages evolve? You're gonna have to have a pretty
authoritative enforcement of the use of a natural language to keep it from
evolving at all.

If someone wants "proper" English, they also have the Oxford Dictionary.

> There are more ways of saying any particular thing in English than most if
> not all other languages, and while you may view this as a weakness, I rather
> appreciate being able to decide what sounds good on my own.

That might be great for an English connoisseur (hey, there's another word for
a potential spelling bee), but not so much for someone who is learning the
language. And learning languages was what the person you originally replied to
was talking about.

> There is also a larger point to be made. If English was such a hindrance why
> is the world like it is today? Language is one of the most important
> components of society, so if English really sucked, we'd probably be using
> some other language on HN. Please explain why, despite what you consider
> it's shortcomings, English is and will be the lingua franca of the world for
> the foreseeable future?

I guess by "larger point" you mean a historical point, which has nothing to do
with the linguistical properties of a language. No-one has said that English
sucks to such a degree that it couldn't have gained traction as an
international lingua franca, but nice try with the straw man. But that doesn't
mean that it is a arguably sub-par in some ways, in this case the original
complaint was about the seemingly random phonetics and spelling of the English
language.

> My ancestors are from India, and I've visited there from time to time.
> Anyone with anything to contribute there speaks English, even if as a second
> (or third or fourth) language. If someone doesn't, that person isn't usually
> educated or hardly even literate. Indian languages developed from the same
> roots as European ones, which is why the term Indo-European exists#. Yet
> somehow, amongst all the possibilities, the most successful Indians use
> English. There is something to be said for that. #
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-
> European_languages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages)

Yeah, there is something to be said for that: the British Empire (which you've
already mentioned and other historical developments. Or what do you hint at
with the last line, that the English language itself played a key role in the
cultures and civilizations that made English an international language? That
they wouldn't have been as successful if they spoke something like Romanian?

Meanwhile you've said nothing about the original complaint, which is the
spelling and phonetics of the language, but if you want to talk about history
I guess that's cool, too.

------
w1ntermute
"Should the US follow South Korea's education system?"

No, that would just make things infinitely worse. The SK education system
consists of nothing more than rote memorization, and produces a pressure-
cooker environment that is responsible for an extremely high teenage suicide
rate.

------
rayiner
Note, he makes most of his money from leverage. 150,000 students each his
lectures each year at $4 an hour.

~~~
beachstartup
i'm not sure i'd call that leverage, more like a clever distribution/marketing
plan.

~~~
rayiner
It's classic leverage. You go from a providing a personal service, which you
sell by the hour, to packaging that service as a product where each hour of
your work can be sold multiple times.

------
gmunu
Here's the final report by the Gates Foundation on evaluating teachers that is
mentioned in the article:
[http://metproject.org/downloads/MET_Ensuring_Fair_and_Reliab...](http://metproject.org/downloads/MET_Ensuring_Fair_and_Reliable_Measures_Practitioner_Brief.pdf).
It's interesting that they have a whole section about how to convince teachers
that the survey results would be reliable.

------
MyDogHasFleas
Can't see the original article due to paywall. But I get the gist from the
comments.

The "teachers don't make enough", "we don't spend enough on education", etc.
debate is on the wrong point. The education system and philosophy in the USA
is broken at all levels. Citizens are acting rationally by not volunteering to
spend more tax dollars on it.

Those that can afford it bypass it entirely by paying for private education,
or if they don't have quite that much money, by moving to a community that is
wealthier and has better public education.

Economic forces combined with the digital age's technology will inevitably
lead to the creative destruction of the education industry, just as other
industries formed under Industrial Age economics have been deconstructed.

Unfortunately this is being fought to the death by the established education
community and its monopolistic, union-based government and quasi-governmental
constituents.

Try telling a public school teacher any of this, and you'll get not a reasoned
response, but scorn, anger, and a slamming door in your face.

It's going to be brutal for them when it comes.

~~~
muzz
Your comment clearly does not address the article, which makes no mention of
the things you cite (union-based government, etc).

------
dkhenry
I am going to preface this comment by saying the following. Its very important
that we do everything we can to improve the quality of education our children
receive. Nothing I am about to say should be taken to mean that we have no
room for improvement!

I think we should start measuring education systems by results not by test
scores. This is stupid that we are elevating a system which makes kids score
better on a few tests but produces a workforce that is persistently behind the
American and European workforce in terms of accomplishments. Great your kids
can read really really well. Mine are changing the world by becoming the
leading Engineers, Scientists and Doctors. Maybe these tests aren't what we
should be optimizing for.

If you told me to go out and reform our public school system the last thing I
would do is say is keep the kids in class twice as long and remove any vestige
of childhood or independent though to thoroughly condition them to check the
right box come test day. That's the impression I am getting from this article.

------
mitchi
Some weird stuff in this article. How can he have a teaching empire if he only
makes 4M a year? Anyway, good for him. Meanwhile there are people putting tons
of content on the internet, for free. Youtube channels, Khan Academy. If you
really want to learn you only need to put aside some quiet time.

~~~
arbuge
4m and 30 employees is a bigger empire than most teachers can lay claim to...

------
inetsee
One of the best quotes from the article, in my opinion - "The harder I work,
the more I make,".

~~~
glesica
It's a great quote, until you read further and get to this one...

"They don't have benefits or even a guaranteed base salary; their pay is based
on their performance, and most of them work long hours and earn less than
public school teachers."

------
mathattack
If he has 30 assistants, he's a lot more than a teacher. He's the equivalent
of a senior partner at a professional services firm.

------
falk
"Education is never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with
what you’ve got." \- George Carlin

[http://youtube.com/watch?v=kJ4SSvVbhLw](http://youtube.com/watch?v=kJ4SSvVbhLw)

------
Dewie
> I traveled to South Korea to see what a free market for teaching talent
> looks like—one stop in a global tour to discover what the U.S. can learn
> from the world's other education superpowers.

Education superpower for having well-educated citizens? Or educations
superpower for having many of the top universities?

