Margaret Thatcher's government favored higher salaries for government employees for this very reason.
A friend of mine recently started teaching math (one of the teaching specialties with relatively high demand) at a "inner city" Chicago Public high school.
Her starting salary was $32,000.
A good chunk of that goes to repay student loans - and her degree is from a relatively inexpensive state college.
With her intelligence and personality she could be making 10-15K more in the private sector with better long term prospects, and a lot less job related stress.
Pretty hard to see why anyone you would want doing her job would stay in it for more than a few years - they either change careers, or move to better paying lower stress jobs in suburban districts.
Thee are a lot of other reasons why the job is almost impossible - poorly socialized students, large classes and union and management politics being near the top of the list.
But the truth is we need to pay people like her a lot better, or they are not going to stay around no matter what else we change.
And when the generation of teacher now 50+ retires and must be repalced, the problem is going to get a LOT worse.
Margaret Thatcher's government favored higher salaries for government employees for this very reason.
what do education majors expect?....to be paid like they are nuclear engineers?...rock stars?...
A starting salary of $32k is nothing to sneeze at - many in other fields make far less. If you look at teacher salaries/benefits 5-8 years down the road, they are comparable to the top of many professional career paths of someone with the same #years.
Teachers need to stop complaining.