Chester E. Finn, Jr. To start producing better students, we need to find better teachers. To do that, Chester E. Finn, Jr., a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, proposes taking a common-sense approach to lure our best and brightest to join the profession: deregulate teaching, and pay outstanding teachers more than mediocre ones. In addition, Finn suggests improvements to how we train teachers, so they can offer better-quality instruction to students.

About the author:
Chester E. Finn, Jr. is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, a member of Hoover?s Koret Task Force on K–12 Education, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. A longer version of this essay appears as "Getting Better Teachers—and Treating Them Right" in the new Hoover Press book A Primer on America's Schools, edited by Terry M. Moe. From Hoover Digest, 2001, No. 3.