Making it easier to fire bad teachers

One of the biggest problems with U.S. public schools is that it is very, very expensive for principals to fire bad teachers. And knowing this, teachers who are not motivated by altruism have limited incentives to put lots of time into their teaching.

Rich people occasionally make large charitable contributions designed to improve primary and secondary education. What they should do is establish a fund that reimburses local public schools for the cost of firing bad teachers. Such a fund would increase the number of bad teachers that are fired while also providing a strong incentive effect for marginally bad teachers to improve.