skills and knowledge, which reduces America's ability to compete in the global economy. He perceived the cause of the failure as low quality teachers, and saw that problem in turn as being caused by low salaries, lack of prestige, and lack of support and good training making the job unattractive to qualified candidates, many of whom could get jobs in lucrative fields like quantitative finance.

Simons thus created the program to provide math and science teachers with higher salaries and better