[vinhcognito]

The teaching salary needs to be competitive with other jobs if you want to attract the right people. Why would any potentially great educator work in a completely unrespected field for no pay?

Also, with higher wages comes increased interest in the position and more ability for schools to actually say no to and filter out bad teachers. It's hard to turn away a warm body when there are teacher shortages everywhere.

Anecdotally, I got very lucky with a newly built public school. I had class sizes of < 15 and overwhelmingly positive experiences as well as one of the best classroom experiences of my life with a retired physics/math professor teaching us 3d geometry and discrete maths.

It was like learning in a theoretical sandbox, having every fleeting thought or hypothetical exploration answered with ease, all completely out of the curriculum scope.

That to me is what i imagine education could be if there was enough money in the system and if people actually cared about the education of future generations.