You can get rid of the teacher certification requirements, and you're still not going to have a rush of incredibly high-quality people going into teaching as long as teachers are valued in the way they currently are. The way we value people is by how much we pay them.
Teachers make a difference, and we would serve our students better by focusing on attracting and retaining the quality teachers by raising teacher pay.
While I agree completely that attracting good teachers is difficult, and we need to spend more time doing that - in part by paying them more money - I don't think there's any evidence for the idea that somehow tenure attracts good teachers. In fact, I think the evidence is to the contrary.
I've consistently said, we need to support charter schools. I think it is important to experiment, by looking at how we can reward excellence in the classroom.
To encourage more top-caliber students to choose teaching, teachers should be paid a lot more, with starting salaries more in the range of $60,000 and potential earnings of as much as $150,000.
I hate tenure. Tenure allows teachers to put their feet up on the desk and possibly have a job forever. That's why I got turned on to charter schools. It's a business model. Every employee and every teacher will be monitored by performance.
When you introduce competition into the public school system, most studies show that schools start to do better when they are competing for students.
What I want to do first with education is my student loan idea. Basically, if you go into teaching and teach for five years, your student loans should be forgiven. It doesn't cost that much.
Barack Obama wants teacher service scholarships.
Paying teachers more improves student achievement.
We must be willing to pay inspiring math and science teachers, who have high paying alternatives in industry, more to teach and reward students who take more challenging courses in high school.
It is vital that teachers can be paid more without having to leave the classroom. This will be particularly important to schools in the most disadvantaged areas as it will empower them to attract and recruit the best teachers.
We need more male black teachers, tempting them with extra cash if necessary.
I have fought to protect those benefits that ensure better salaries for teachers across the Nation such as grants to pay off student loans and funding for Teach for America. Still, we must all do more to show our continued appreciation for our Nation's leading role models.
Why don't we have enough teachers of math and science in the public schools? One answer is well, if they knew the subject well, they'd also know enough to work for Google or Goldman Sachs or God knows where.
Fixing our schools must begin with reforming the way we attract talent to teaching.
