“Part of the problem is that school districts do not / cannot pay people enough to draw them into education rather than working for Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, Intel, Lockheed-Martin, GM, Ford, and so forth.”
And even if money is not an issue, the liberal working conditions driveaway anyone with any other option.
I was in Texas when I got my teaching credential, and there was a program in place to convert people from science and math fields into teachers. Well there was a small group of us engineers that decided to take it on. Most were retired, some just wanted to do something different. We all got our pieces of paper and started teaching. Every single one of us quit the first year.
There is that, yes, throughout the public school system. Do you think that might change if wages were higher???
It also coincides with the desire to flatten out any racial/class differences in scholastic performance. The false notion that you can raise one group up by tearing another group down. Additionally the general cultural decline where the bottom sets the cultural agenda and all others ape it.
Alinsky the cause of the all, I doubt it. You give him too much credit.