I had a great conversation on Thursday with someone about the notion of applying best practices to education. Historically best practices have not been applied in any meaningful way in the field of traditional education. Teachers in one district often don’t know what the best teachers in their district do let alone teachers in other districts, states and countries. All that has the potential to change in the coming years. And given that we’re likely moving into a world of entrepreneurial education the question is whether as the generally collaborative nature becomes increasingly competitive won’t teachers want to hoard their “secrets.”

I don’t think they can nor will they want to (if they’re smart).

Think about Tiger Woods.

Before Tiger came to the PGA the average tour pro was a bit more slothful than they are today. They weren’t spending nearly as much time in the fitness trailer or on the range. Tiger comes to the Tour and radically changes it. Now people are hitting the weights, shedding pounds and dialing in their flexibility. While Tiger Woods tries to keep his workout regimen a secret I’d be shocked if most Tour pros didn’t have a pretty good clue as to what he’s doing. And you know what? They’re still no Tiger.

Having a Tiger Woods in golf raises the bar for everyone. The sport has become more compelling as players drive the ball further and score lower. Tiger faces increasing competition from people who he inspired to get closer to their true potential. But no one sheds tears of pity for Tiger nor should they. Because in the end he relishes the fact that he has helped push the game to another level even if it means he has to work harder to stay on top of it.

Education will eventually go in the same direction. Tiger-esque teachers will emerge (it’s already happening in South Korea) who realize that by getting really, really good at what they do they’ll be able to reap rewards that are more comparable to what superstars in other industries achieve. And what this will do is raise the bar for everyone. As competition emerges in an industry that has seen precious little it’ll be really fun to see the results. And just as importantly, the impact those results will have on students.

From the NYTimes last week on hedge fund manager salaries:

To make Alpha’s list, a manager needed to earn at least $240 million last year, nearly double the amount in 2005. That is up from a minimum of $30 million in 2001 and 2002. Combined, the top 25 hedge fund managers last year earned $14 billion — enough to pay New York City’s 80,000 public school teachers for nearly three years.

Doing the math means that each NYC public school teacher makes, on average, $58k per year.

Now, last year a report on education in the US found that this country is on the brink of an educational crisis:

The Teaching Commission notes that “our schools are only as good as their teachers,” yet this “occupation that makes all others possible is eroding at its foundations.” Top students are far less likely to go into teaching today; salaries are stagnant; nearly 50 percent of new teachers leave within five years. To remedy this, the commission calls for raising teachers’ base pay, finding ways to reward the best teachers, raising standards for acquiring a teaching degree and testing would-be teachers, on the basis of national standards, to be certain they have mastered the subjects they will teach.

People don’t work for money, they work for meaning. But when the disparity between the upside of working at a teacher (avg 58k to maybe 80-90k after a lifetime of service) versus working in another white-collar job (6 figures after a few years, up to $1.7B if you’re the hotshot hedge fund manager) is too large to ignore for many of the most talented folks.

The question then becomes, how to close the upside gap between being a teacher, and working in another, more lucrative job?

There are incremental solutions, like the findings in this report released by the Center for Teaching Quality in North Carolina. It calls for pay based on performance, and not seniority… rewards should go to teachers with better-performing students, and to teachers that do more work outside of the classroom. We fully endorse that idea, but there are more dramatic ways to close the upside gap.

The way we’re approaching it here it to help teachers scale their expertise by enabling teachers to reach more students. The best teachers in the world shouldn’t be constrained by physical walls that enable them to reach a few thousand students a year at most. Those best of the best should be rock stars, and should make more money than crappy teachers whose lectures you have to struggle to stay awake in.

Helping education scale effectively is a problem we’re working to solve at Education Revolution. It excites me that by achieving this, we’ll not only be incentivizing super smart people who might otherwise go into I-banking to help the world become a smarter place, but also help drive change in an industry that badly needs it.