Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating flushing money down the education toilet represented by the current teachers or on more "resources" (whatever that means. On a theoretical level, salary economics determine who will do the teaching.
Maybe their salaries are (as you put it) "abysmally low" due to the FACT that teachers (as a group) score below the median on their college entrance exams and then graduate college in the BOTTOM 20% of their graduating classes (this even considering that an "education major" is horribly deficient in REAL academic content but focues more on touchy-feely, psyco-babble that is practically impossbile to fail as most of the "content" is subjective. Even "master's degrees" in education are grossly deficient when compared to a master's degree in almost ANY OTHER field. The real academic requirements are simply NOT there.
Of course, there ARE good teachers and there are even some (in some few states) that are teaching subjects that they actually MAJORED in during college but they are getting fewer and farther between. The education establishment does not WANT these people teaching because they have practically no control over the subjects they were required to take in college and, therefore, haven't been subjected to the socialist propaganda taught in most "teacher's colleges". So frankly, I'm tired of hearing MOST teachers whinning about their pay - too many of them got their degrees in education because nothing else was open to them due to their lack of academic achievment and they knew the hours and salary ranges when they decided to teach. Look at Mass., for instance: their state legislature decided to TEST their teachers with a HIGH SCHOOL profeciency test and over 50% of the state's teachers FAILED IT their first time and almost 40% failed it on subsequent takings!! Of course, the NEA and the MEA jumped up and down, cried foul and applied political pressure to get the test either changed (dumbed down) or dropped altogether.
There's an old adage that goes something to the tune of if you can change jobs/careers and make the same pay, you're making what you're worth. If you can change job/careers and make more money, you're not making what you're worth but if you can't change job/careers and make, at least, what you're currently earning, then you're making MORE than you're worth. Too many teachers can't go into another career and maintain their current level of salary and benefits for me to believe that most aren't already making MORE than they're actually worth.
We need to do away with "teacher's colleges" and degrees/majors in "education" along with removing the federal, and even the state, governments from all matters involving education and RETURN the control to the local parents and taxpayers.
Now, in the defense of our good teachers - sadly they are having to spend entirely too much time baby-sitting and trying to ride herd on unruly students who do not wish to be in any school environment. This takes time away from actual teaching and turns them into substitute police - something that no teacher should have to put up with. The best way to solve this would be to remove compulsory attendence laws so that only those who wished to there and/or whose parents wished for them to be there - would be. Forcing perpetual childhood is no way to create responsible adults and informed citizens, IMHO, and let's face it - there will always be a need for burger-flippers, floor sweepers and ditch diggers (all worthy jobs even though they don't typically require great amounts of intellect nor schooling) and to force those who have no higher aspirations to attend schools for 13 years where they simply serve to disrupt the learning process for those who do take their studies seriously and to distract teacher's attention from same is ludicrous. Maybe if the teachers who REALLY wish to TEACH weren't having to deal with some of these additional problem areas, they wouldn't feel so over-taxed and under-paid.