I have to disagree with you here (for many reasons). I know that there are many very bright and capable teachers out there, but there are too many teachers who aren't like this, plus many good ones get fed up and leave the job.
Note that I'm speaking primarily of teachers in public schools here.
But what I'm saying is that if teaching was regarded more as a profession, then better people would go into teaching. And let's not judge the value of an educator (especially for the primary/elementary grades) simply by their smarts! Intelligence is important, but certainly not the only thing! When I write of treating educators as professionals, it's really not all about pay. Teachers are notoriously under the thumb of controlling administrators and forced to comply with school rules regarding what and how subjects are taught. They are treated as if their opinions do not matter.
A Master's in Education is a far cry from say, a Master's in biology, history, or physics. An M.Ed. is far less demanding than any of these other three degrees and tends to emphasize fluffy subjects like diversity, social justice, and critical thinking skills. Plus, math and science requirements tend to center on low-end introductory courses. It's not surprising that M.Ed. degrees tend to attract less-than-stellar students.
Okay, my MEd. program does not have any of these "fluffy" requirements. If I had to describe my program is would be that it is "easy but a lot of work", meaning that good grades are not hard to come by, but everyone must put a lot of effort into it. It's not busy work - it's very thoughtful work. For instance, I wrote about 150 pages of papers for 3 classes last semester (one was a 40-pager that was set up just like a traditional Master's thesis without the carrying out of the research), plus had 2 math classes that had demanding assignments regularly. And don't forget that as I future high school math teacher, I am required to already have my Bachelor's in Math before entering this program. The purpose of the MEd. is to provide ALL of my teacher training.
Then there's the problem of pay increases being tied only to seniority. Teaching is one of the few jobs where you can't be rewarded because you're good at your job. Why would a talented, energetic person with other options stay in a job where even the idea of merit pay is controversial?
Teachers as a group also resist the idea of being evaluated or judged on performance. And once a teacher is tenured, that's it. If there are layoffs, a bad tenured teacher with more seniority will displace a good one with less seniority.
Sorry, but I just don't like that system, and I think it attracts (and retains) people who tend toward mediocrity. Surely, you must see some of this stuff among your fellow students.
I personally don't think that merit pay is the answer. I think that administrators need to step up and actually DO the evaluations that they are supposed to be doing, and go through the steps to fire truly bad teachers. I think that what we would find if a MEANINGFUL evaluation system was ever put into place if that we have generally great teachers and very few poor ones. This is why we will probably never have a meaningful evaluation system - because then we would have to find someone else to blame for our educational failings.
