So what kind of teachers could a school get if it paid them $125,000 a year?
An accomplished violist who infuses her music lessons with the neuroscience of why one needs to practice, and creatively worded instructions like, “Pass the melody gently, as if it were a bowl of Jell-O!”A self-described “explorer” from Arizona who spent three decades honing her craft at public, private, urban and rural schools.
Two with Ivy League degrees. And Joe Carbone, a phys ed teacher, who has the most unusual résumé of the bunch, having worked as Kobe Bryant’s personal trainer.
“Developed Kobe from 185 lbs. to 225 lbs. of pure muscle over eight years,” it reads.
A New York charter school called the Equity Project is hiring teachers like that, because it believes that teacher quality is the key to “achieving educational equity for low income students.” I suspect they’ll find out that student quality matters too.
I don’t doubt that teacher quality matters tremendously, but the real question is, what exactly is teacher quality?
The school’s founder, Zeke M. Vanderhoek, is the 32-year-old founder of Mahattan GMAT, is he thinks that contagious enthusiasm — a high “engagement factor” — is what matters. I suspect you can get that for a lot less than $125k.