This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Utah's schools need to do better. We are last in education spending per pupil and some of our teachers can't keep up with the needs of our many Utah children.
Let's be smarter about education and try a new idea. Economist Raj Chetty, considered one of the top economists in the world, estimated that replacing the bottom 5 percent of teachers (as measured by value added) with average teachers would increase the average total income of that classroom by more than $250,000 over a lifetime.
But we should not fire our struggling teachers and send the students into uncertainty. Instead, we need to turn our struggling teachers into productive teachers. Roland Fryer, another of the world's top economists, discovered from a series of studies that intensive tutoring (where students are tutored for an hour a day, five days a week) massively improved student grade scores and their future education outcomes.
Gov. Herbert, some of our teachers are struggling and need help, let's give the students in these classrooms tutors to help them out.
Richard Buck
Murray