[pflats]

Why would you say that? Teachers have an incredibly high attrition rate. Barely half of the new teacher classes make it 5 years.

The vast majority of the highly-regarded teachers I know are ones who have been doing it for 25 years or more.

[forgotAgain]

The original topic was: "It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer."

I was answering the posted question "Is there any other career where this would not be accepted as a given?".

So my post was that for teachers it is not accepted as given that they get better and scarcer with age. I did not make a statement whether that was true or not, just that it was not accepted as a given. In support of my view I would offer the numerous recent news stories calling for the end of last-hired, first-fired rule when laying off public school teachers.

[pflats]

I see your point, but I'm not quite sure that the two things go hand in hand.

If the vast majority of developers were publically financed and had LIFO laws, I'd imagine that there'd be calls to end that practice as well. In both cases, though, I'd argue it's outliers that are the source of the consternation.

I think most education reform advocates would agree teachers get better as they gain experience.