[tibbetts]

Friends of mine work at these private schools for lower salaries than public schools. The reality is the job sucks a lot less. You get ~100% engaged students, supportive parents, and a school administration with minimal perverse incentives. Struggling students and discipline problems get filtered out and sent somewhere else. There a loads of qualified teachers, and really plenty of very capable teachers. There is no need for the schools to pay a premium to get the best teachers.

Imagine if 99% of programming jobs were on Win32 native apps using tools from 1998, and 1% of them were using modern tools on a modern Unix-derived stack? Would the 1% really have to pay a premium to get top 10% developers?

[jkhdigital]

I was about to compose this exact comment… thanks for saving me the trouble. In K-12 education, and especially elementary level, the job is at least as much about daycare as it is education. And well-socialized children makes the daycare part of the job a lot easier, so less stress = less demand for financial inducements (compensation).

[throwaway316943]

Best answer and a good metaphor. Paying more only goes so far in attracting talent. You need the job to be manageable, the environment needs to be at the least not actively hostile, and the system the job exists within to not be completely broken.

[jkhdigital]

Incentive alignment would help too. If only there was a socially and legally tractable way to pay teachers like sales reps…