[wakawaka28]

>I'm going to take the opposite view and say paying teachers 32k is a bad thing--here's an article from an hour ago saying that 90% of Illinois schools have a teacher shortage tied directly to low pay. Clearly this salary isn't signaling that the market is saturated with teachers.

Actually no, the low salary may simply be lagging slightly behind market conditions. Schools can't just magically pay all teachers more because of a temporary shortage of applicants, and paying only the new hires more would be unfair. Salary increases need to be well-justified and applied uniformly, as teacher salaries are some of the most structured in the whole economy and paid for by taxes that can't be changed quickly. So eventually, the salaries might go up, but the shortage might also lessen too as more graduates appear.