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Comment by LogicX | Hacker News Reader

Pat went to my high school and computer science program. It’s in a small rural, Pennsylvania farming town - pop 2000. Somehow we got an amazing math teacher turned CompSci and he turned out world class students - we always ranked high enough each year to compete internationally in ACSL.

A few years back when the teacher retired, we all gathered together to thank him, including Pat! World-class guy, and makes us proud! So great to share a story with students, who come from nothing, how you can leave our hometown and eventually be the CEO of Intel.

Wishing Pat the best of luck in his new role!

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A single good teacher can make all the difference in the world.

From an economics perspective, it's kinda insane that teachers are paid so poorly, since they are such force multipliers. A single brilliant teacher can positively influence the future educational trajectory (and future earnings) of thousands of kids. Investing in making that happen more often seems like it would have great dividends.

The problem, in the US, anyway, is more that either they can't be paid differently or that the bad ones can't be fired and the new ones paid more and held to higher standards. The cost per student is already quite high.

Nations like Finland and Poland have figured out how to make that change and seen their students flourish; hopefully we will too.

Which is kind of sad, isn't it?

Doesn't that mean that a lot of people will never be on the receiving end just because they did not win the teacher-lottery (arguably the chance of getting such a teacher is rather slim)?

Shouldn't our systems be more robust? (Not talking about normalizing these effects down, but creating a better environment for everyone, using these effects en masse)

We must pay teachers on par with Senior Software Developers at least.

We need our very best to go into teaching. It's the ultimate multiplier role.

I hear my wife and her friends constantly talk about XYZ job that makes more than they do and it's very demoralizing to them. I can definitely see why there aren't many passionate teachers. My wife has been teaching 6 years and is just now at the $42,000 mark. The state health insurance is decent at least.

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