The Equity Project is a new public charter school that has adopted a unique pay scale – the school will pay all teachers a base salary of $125,000 per year. On top of that, teachers can earn up to a $25,000 bonus their first year, plus they qualify for a comprehensive benefits package. In return, teachers agree to take on more hours, certain administrative responsibilities, and classes of 30 students.
While TEP is an interesting experiment, the results will be wanting of any real meaning.
First off, since state and federal dollars fund the school, it is free to the families of the students. Application to the school does not reflect the preferences of parents ranked against alternate choices. The only knowledge one can ascertained is that parents applying to this school desire it more than they desire their local, failing public school.
Then there is the question of performance. Without a profit line, how will we know if the school is successful? Government and the media will judge the school’s performance based solely on student scores on government-mandated tests — not on dollar votes cast by parents.
Finally, there is the use of scarce resources. The school hired a phys-ed teacher who was once the personal trainer of Kobe Bryant (not knowing any more information, I assume the teacher was a trainer in high demand). Other teachers have similar pedigrees (again, I cannot speak to the market value of these folks). For the sake of argument, and accepting the premise that the school only hires the best that $125,000 can buy, I will assume that all of the teachers are highly qualified and in-demand.
Bryant makes like a bazillion dollars because of his skill and fitness on the basketball court. Basketball – like all professional sports – is a sport where the differences (in absolute terms) between the most valuable player and a bench warmer are miniscule. Especially when viewed against the spectrum of everyone who plays basketball. Therefore, anyone who has the knowledge to increase Bryant’s performance by (say) even 1% is worth real money.
Who would bid against the market for such a personal trainer, only to have him work in a fifth-grade gym class? If this was a private school, then the answer is someone who wants to satisfy the preferences of certain parents. As this is a government-funded school, the answer is someone who adheres to the Trotskyite belief in the new soviet man.
Putting someone so qualified in a gym class in not an efficient use of scarce resources – it is similar to suggesting that Mises should have spent his years teaching fifth grade social studies instead of writing Human Action, etc.
In the end, since this school is not subject to the market, we will learn nothing from this latest grand experiment in government schools.
{ 14 comments }
Sounds like a massive waste of resources. This is a typical government program, only worse.
Suffice to say that I’m in pretty much agreement with your critique of the school.
Regarding the phys ed teacher, though, he was very in-demand as a trainer, but the story mentions that he had to get out of it when he was a strength coach for a NBA team but his own son was overheard complaining that his dad hadn’t taught him to play basketball.
Whether it’s economically efficient for that guy to work as a teacher is one question, but it appears that the guy was unhappy with the hours/expectations of such a high-profile job, and prioritized family over his other options.
I’ll bet it wasn’t a question of competing with the market to hire him at his highest rate, because I’m sure the Lakers were paying him more than $125K. I think it was a question of them offering him a decent salary and a good work/life balance to go along with it.
From what I’ve seen, the more they pay the teachers, the worse the school becomes. It attracts all the bureaucrats.
Most “Austrian” economists are making less than 125k a year and are teaching equally if not less motivated students in dismal state colleges and universities.
Moreover, Mises teaching a privately funded seminar at NYU is akin to teaching fifth grade social studies for many.
And, you do realize we are talking about Washington Heights?
Another statist “free market” solution. Ho hum …
But, there are better state-run education systems than others, aren’t they?
Compare the apparent succesful case of Finland with that of Spain, for example.
The ideal would be totally private education, but state-run systems aren’t all the same.
“Most “Austrian” economists are making less than 125k a year and are teaching equally if not less motivated students in dismal state colleges and universities.”
And?
“Moreover, Mises teaching a privately funded seminar at NYU is akin to teaching fifth grade social studies for many.”
Does that include you? Because I’d class that bunch of individuals as “imbeciles”.
Neither article even brought up several questions that I have when any bureaucracy decides to pay people higher salaries than their average:
1. Who pays the 125K, I realize the tax payers do, buy which ones?
2. What about all the overhead, maintenance, grief counselors, cops and security, administrators, etc, do they all get the 125K.
3. Are these teachers members of the NEA or equivalent? If they are then what exactly are their “Without Cause” termination procedures? Do they have card check?
This is pointless, no matter how “good” the teachers are, they will eventually react to being in a bureaucracy. These folks may take more time but eventually they will come in line or the bureaucrats will simply stop the program. How do they stop it? That is easy: Load it with expensive overhead and the cost will be so high that it will fail.
Actually, school choice is about as much free market as you can work into a government-funded system; since the schools will want to maximize the number of students they have(and thus their funding), they will have to maximize their efficiency – the hundred grand that might have gone to a sports stadium would instead go to newer textbooks, for example.
I’ve just read the article on the mises.org site on what management is and what it is not, by von Mises, and I wonder if public schooling—like police departments—fall inside the scope of “administrative management”; i.e., not profit-based management. And given that, even when the performance of such types of organizations is “measured” directly (test and crime statistics), how would any judgement of the monetary value of such organizations be arrived at, let alone whether the amounts spent are too little or too much.
“Moreover, Mises teaching a privately funded seminar at NYU is akin to teaching fifth grade social studies for many.”
“Moreover, Mises teaching a privately funded seminar at NYU is akin to teaching fifth grade social studies for many.”
Dollar votes are a poor indicator of success; they are usually a sign of imaginary product differentiation rather than the objective superiority of a product. This school’s success will be based on more than media and government interpretation of test scores. School success or lack thereof can be measured by its test scores, attendance rates, promotion rates, disciplinary referrals and actions, classroom culture, and student and parent satisfaction.
To insinuate that attracting competent and professional teachers to classrooms is a waste of resources is absurd and displays a complete lack of understanding of how quality education, including health and physical education, benefits society as a whole and increases efficiency in the short and long run in a variety of ways. This school is offering more competitive salaries in a competitive market. This is an anti-bureacracy within a public system. It’s about time.
They fire everyone except for the teachers, require them to work as much as 80 to 90 hours per week and then tout that they pay the teachers 125k. This is wild and not sustainable. Moreoever, the principal gives himself four years reach the desired level of success but the teachers can be fired on the spot. While this seems to be successful, it is simply another Neo-Liberal system used to make people buy into corporatization and the “free” market.
Comments on this entry are closed.