There are roughly 17M US high school students across public and private schools. If the top 6% of US high school students were tutors, we would have 1M more tutors.
Imagine what that would do for our US K12 education system and our society.
There are 1M high school teachers currently in the US. We would have an additional tutor per teacher.
So how do we incentivize students?
Make tutoring a valued credential for colleges
Let's make tutoring a valued and worthwhile credential to pursue. Perhaps certified student tutors gain automatic admissions to a set of schools and the top 1% of tutors have the same status as highly recruited athletes.
Corporations offer meaningful store currency and opportunities
Nike, Lululemon, Allbirds, and whatever brands teens are excited about can supply tutors with credits, digital currency, and/or job opportunities in exchange for tutoring. We can find a way to make the economics work for corporations given the potential for high lifetime value from the brand loyalty.
Build and invest in a legit national student competition
When I was in high school, the competitions that everyone knew about were math and science olympiads and company sponsored science competitions (e.g., Siemens Competition). Winning or placing high in these competitions led to meaningful cash prizes, national recognition, a strong chance of admission to an elite university, and time with the President.
What if we had the same energy poured into a national teaching competition? The criteria would be a combination of quantitative factors (e.g., hours tutored and number of students) and more qualitative factors (e.g., degree of innovation, impact on accessibility).