If you want good math teachers, you have to make attractive offers that will draw in the best talent. So, let's do some math: The median price of an existing

If you want good math teachers, you have to make attractive offers that will draw in the best talent. So, let's do some math: The median price of an existing single-family home in the Califoria Bay Area in February 2024 was $1.25 million. The range of teacher salaries in the Bay Area is $50K - $100K. A reasonable downpayment on that home would be ~$250,000, followed by yearly payments in the range $64K (30-year) to 80K (15-year). Following the 'housing should consume 30% of income' - allowing teachers to have children and buy a car and go on vacations and so on - this would require salaries of $200K - $250K per year under current market conditions. Thus, anyone wanting their own home and a family will probably not be considering a career in teaching - you'd end up as a lifelong two-room apartment renter. AI tutoring is a great idea - but a tutor isn't a teacher. The job of the teacher is to excite and motivate the students, provide overall guidance and appropriately difficult problem sets for the students to work on. The one-one-one tutor is there to help with the problem sets, especially when students get stuck. Unfortunately, here in the USA we have a system that values the CEO of McDonalds - which delivers very unhealthy food to the population - at $19 million per year - and teachers are valued at the same rate as garbage truck operators (at least in the Bay Area). The result is that most students entering higher education need one-two years of remedial math education before being able to grasp the higher math, e.g. vector calculus, linear algebra, complex analysis etc., which is needed for modern engineering and scientific disciplines. This results in competitive disadvantage relative to China and other countries that invest heavily in childhood education.