[Avshalom]

38 hours a week implies that a total of maybe thirty minutes a day of after hours work, I'll go poke my head around but I'm pretty sure I've seen studies putting average work load at 16 hours a week after hours (+ 38h at school giving my 50). I like how the second link acknowledges that teachers spend time after hours grading and writing tests and lesson plans (including specialized 30 page reports for how they will personally ensure that billy will pass the state test this year) etc, but hand waves it with "a job that permits relatively more work at home is typically attractive."

That said while I feel that the people in charge of making sure the next generation is capable of progressing society should probably get paid more than they do, I'm not going to claim that doubling teacher salaries would really help anything. I only made that comment in response to the idea that the "Gov's Education Department metric seems to be "pleasing the teacher's unions"... And at that, they are very good."

>>Incidentally, while it may be the case that private schools don't educate everyone, so what? If they can educate students in category X better than public schools, but schools can educate category Y better than private, isn't it best for everyone if private schools take the X students and public takes the Y students?

I'm not arguing against private schools categorically, more so I'm sticking up for the public education system. That said 1. I'm generally a big proponent of heterogeneity in peer groups 2. It's not that public schools are better at educating Y, it's that private schools are often unwilling to.