Former Intel CEO: Education is key to strong economy

The former CEO of Intel said Arizona should first improve education if it wants to improve its struggling economy.

“You need smart people that can add value to what they do if you want to have economic growth,” said Dr. Craig Barrett, now chairman of Gov. Jan Brewer’s Arizona Ready Education Council.

Barrett also said the state needs to take measures to invest in research and give the educated people a chance to make something of themselves.

Despite calls to improve Arizona’s education system, Barrett recognized that there is no silver bullet to fix the all the problems, but the state can do a lot more to bring good teachers into the classroom.

“Although we have some very, very good teachers, typically, the college students that go into schools of education are not in the top tier of our college graduates,” he said, adding that most teaching schools focus on the mindset of teaching than the actual content.

Barrett also said Arizona should us a pay system for teachers than is based on performance rather than time spent in the system.

“We should treat our teachers as professionals,” he said. “We historically have not paid our teachers on the basis performance. I think great teachers deserve a very good salary, so I would pay good teachers and great teachers more than we pay them today because we pay teachers today based on time in position.”

Barrett added that the pay scale could create some tension amongst teachers and push them to be better. They would be graded on how their individual students progress.

A few years ago, Barrett said that, if had to do it all over again, he wouldn’t put Intel in Arizona because of the state’s education system consistently ranking in the lower 20 percent of America.

“You want your site, your state, your locale to have an absolutely great education system, not only to produce the workers you need, but to provide the educational infrastructure for the workers’ children and Arizona is not wonderful in that respect,” he said.

Barrett did not give a specific location on where he would have started Intel, but intimated that he may have been forced to look overseas because an international company needs the best workers to remain competitive on a worldwide scale.