Educational Free Agents

When it comes to education, you don't always get what you pay for.  So it will be interesting to see what happens at an experimental charter school in Washington Heights, New York, where each member of an all-star pedagogical team will earn $125,000 a year.  The school, "The Equity Project," is the brainchild of Zeke M. Vanderhoek, an entrepreneur and former Washington Heights middle-school teacher, whose heart seems to be in the right place.

The teachers were selected after a nationwide search; some 600 people applied for the eight spots.  The credentials are impressive: The PE teacher, for example, spent several years as the head strength and conditioning coach for the Los Angeles Lakers.  (Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, teach Kobe?) Will they make a difference in a low-income neighborhood with struggling students?

The Solipsist is a bit torn.  We certainly value education, and we think teaching is a noble profession.  The Solipsist himself is a teacher, and he comes from a family chock full of educators.  There is something undeniably satisfying about teachers being paid almost as well as junior investment bankers--even if they don't get the eye-popping end-of-year bonuses (then again, most junior execs may not be getting those bonuses now, either). 

(Digression: What exactly is a chock, and why is it always full? EOD)

We have a problem, though, with the underlying assumption: If you pay teachers a lot of money, you get good results.  We're really not sure that's the case.  After all, these eight lucky winners were obviously considered excellent educators, even though they weren't making six-figure salaries.  And while it's nice to think that these folks will be dedicating themselves to a somewhat disadvantaged population, we can't help but feel bad for those students left behind, whose school districts couldn't afford to shell out the money to keep the stars.

This charter-school is like the New York Yankees, buying its way to a title at the expense of small-market schools.  (And if the Yankees' success over the last few seasons is any indication of the logic of such spending, then Mr. Vanderhoek may be in for an unpleasant surprise.)

The bottom line is that nobody becomes a teacher for the money.  People teach because they enjoy teaching.  They excel at it because they devote time to thinking about how to teach better.  It's wonderful for these eight people that they can convert their passion into decent salaries that will, one hopes, allow them to have comfortable lives.  But realistically, this is not going to become the norm for the vast majority of teachers, who will continue to muddle along with low t0 middle class wages.

All that will change with projects like this is that free-agency-minded teachers will continually scan job-search websites, looking to abandon the local team that really needs them for the big-spending school systems that want to buy their way to the pennant.