Thinking at the Margin: It's Revolutionary
It is wrong to compare Tom Brady to teachers in general. Instead you should compare athletes in general to teachers in general. Or compare best in class athletes to best in class teachers.<p>The general comparison would compare minor league baseball or local club soccer players to your kids kindergarten teacher. You might find that the teacher comes out on top.<p>The best in class comparison is harder. There are only 32? Nfl teams therefore there is enormous competition for the 32 best quarterbacks (maybe more including backups). If you are the #200 quarterback on the planet no one cares. Those selection dynamics don&#x27;t happen for teachers. There might be some elite tutors who are highly sought out by wealthy parents, but not with the same intensity as quarterbacks.<p>This is compounded by the fact that sports skill is more easily measured than teaching skill. We might debate if Tom Brady is better than Peyton Manning, but it is obvious both are in the top ten in the world. Not so with teachers. Some are clearly better, but the clarity of ranking you can get with sports performance is impossible is any measure of teaching performance.