Million Dollar Teacher Project

We believe that the most cost-effective and sustainable way to improve schools is to direct more resources and support directly to the teaching profession. With the right resources, schools will have the ability to attract great talent in to every classroom, making it so that every student is taught by a highly trained, qualified, and engaged teacher. In Arizona, teachers are undervalued and underpaid, and we hope to remedy this through our programming to see students and schools achieve higher outcomes across the state. To do this, we have identified the pillars of teacher support, recognition, and compensation. When teachers have the proper support systems, they are better prepared to guide their students toward graduation, and those students are more prepared to realize academic and economic success, creating stronger communities throughout Arizona. We want to see teachers who make progress toward these goals be properly recognized for their achievements, energizing them to continue their great work and encouraging them to develop it even further. One of the most important ways to do this is to compensate them fairly for their work. The Million Dollar Teacher Project was spurred by the idea of a teacher who could take home a million-dollar salary. While this may never come to fruition, we believe that educators deserve to earn more, and we will continue to champion efforts to see long-term, sustainable growth in teaching salaries.

MDTP has a number of programs which address the various needs of teachers. We developed the Classroom Support Team to lighten the load on educators by placing a team of 4 additional talented individuals in partnering classrooms. The Million Dollar Teacher Tree was crafted to allow community members to provide the supplies their teachers need to have more successful classrooms. To remedy inadequate compensation, we have started the In Teachers We Trust Endowment Fund which is used to support innovative strategies to increase teacher pay long-term. To recognize all the great things teachers achieve, we have also implemented the Take a Teacher to Lunch (TTL) Program and the Million Dollar Teacher Series. This series recognizes an outstanding teacher each month, giving them the chance to tell their story on Mix 96.9 and a prize package. TTL brings fully catered lunches and corporate-sponsored prizes to celebrate the achievements of teachers throughout the school year. Through these existing programs and the ones we continue to develop, we are taking a grassroots approach to supporting education. Our programs are designed to create these bonds between teachers and their communities where each are mutually invested in the success of the other. We aim to create communities that rally behind their teachers; where students, parents, administrators, and business-owners are invested in the well-being of their educators because they know this will directly translate to the success of their students.

Our biggest asset at MDTP is a wide network of support and dedicated internal team. We have a number of committed partners who aid us in our mission by offering their talent and resources. Arizona State University has shown great support by offering student engagement and capacity building expertise. Other organizations with whom we have partnered include Treasures for Teachers, Public Allies, and the Maricopa County Education Service Agency; not to mention the countless restaurants and businesses who offer incentives for teacher participation in our programs. Within our organization, we have a passionate team who are committed to seeing outcomes both in the field and in MDTP's offerings. Our vision for the reach of MDTP is immense, and we will continue to take steps to develop and refine our processes so we can meet those goals. With the right balance of ambition and prudence, we are seeing the success of our work, and we expect it to continue for many years to come.

In our short tenure, MDTP has seen much success in impacting teachers and students across Arizona. Since 2016, we have held TTL programs in 13 school districts at 20 schools, impacting 900 teachers and reaching 27,000 students. This directly translates to improved student outcomes, as there is noted improvement in the standardized testing performance of students who have seen the presence of MDTP in their classroom.