When I mention that quality teachers should be compensated more than poor teachers, people are concerned about who gets to say which are the bad teachers are and which are the good teachers. I ask them, "Do you know who the poor teachers are in your child's school?" They answer "Yes." And there I make my point, we've been trained to think there is no measure you can use for good and bad, yet everyone knows when something is good or whether it is bad, even when it comes to teaching.
What happens because of collective bargaining and tenure for teachers is that poor teachers remain in the system and have no incentive to become quality teachers. Parents who are involved and know the system pull strings and leverage their children into the quality classrooms. This leaves other children, whose parents don't get as involved and have more need of quality teachers, with the poorer teachers. There are principles that apply here, they can be called principles of free-enterprise.
Free-enterprise principles teach:
- That when high-quality and low-quality options are compared side-by-side, it is self-evident which is the high-quality option.
- That whenever you allow freedom to choose, people choose the best options for them
- That these options are usually provided in the most efficient, effective way by those trying to attract others to certain options.
- That if parents were free to choose the classrooms and schools for their children, and schools and teachers were paid according to the number of students they attract, the following would happen:
- The better teachers would consequently be better compensated
- The poor teachers would have incentive to become better teachers
- The optimum number of students per classroom would naturally become evident, and it might be different for every teacher and classroom, being dependent on the teaching styles of teachers and the learning styles of students
- The optimum number of square feet per student in a school would also become evident, and it might be different for each school
- The competition would improve the entire school system as each school's administration and each teacher find more ways to attract students and more effective ways to educate
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