Profit of Education

This important book translates evidence and examines policy, proposing a plan to save America's schools by rewarding teachers with professional-level salaries distributed wisely. Profit of Education makes it clear that rethinking the teaching profession is the key to repairing America's broken-down education system and securing our nation's future. Accomplishing that, author Dick Startz says, requires lifting teacher pay to professional levels and rewarding teachers for student success, with the goal of improving student learning by the equivalent of one extra year of schooling. Profit of Education takes the reader on a chapter-by-chapter walk through the evidence on pay-oriented, teacher-centric reform of the public school system, showing that such an approach can work. Startz translates the extensive scientific evidence on school reform into easily understood terms, demonstrating the enormous difference teachers make in student outcomes. Proposed levels of teacher salaries are established, and the difficult issue of differential pay is examined in depth, as are many of the practical and political issues involved in measuring teacher success. Last, but hardly least, Startz shows how teacher-centric school reform will pay off for the taxpayer and the economy.