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Comment by BatteryMountain | Hacker News Reader

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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