[AD from SpringBay]

Absolutely - remember also, many administrators do not supervise the teachers. They shuffle papers from one department to another and become involved in their little wars over who will be the next principal / superintendent. Those not directly involved in all that are busy testing the students and implementing indoctrinations from the NEA. Public education is a HUGE and mostly unexamined industry.

And, this is only anecdotal, but am I the only one out there who knows multiple NEA members who are biding their time for a few years, slumming it out in the classroom, waiting for their turn as an administrator (i.e. - finally get to make six figures)?

[RobbyS]

It happens because there is no career track for public school teachers like that in higher education, where you can progress from, say. instructor to full professor with commensurate increases in salary, along with professional recognition through publicans etc. There is a kind of iron law of compensation for teachers that goes back at least a century: the top salary for a teacher is twice that of a beginning teachers. The basis for this is the legal fact that a teacher is a “mere employee,” with no (legal) authority to decide who, when, where, or how to teach. In a socialist state such as the soviet union this is also the fare of every “professional”, physicians included. But education in this has been socialized since the 19th Century.