As for paying them more to get skilled teachers, I also disagree. Teaching is a dumping ground for poor-performing students (look up SAT and GRE scores for future teachers; they are ALWAYS at the bottom). Paying them more won't solve the problem. The problem is a culture that discourages excellence overall (yes, there are great teachers, but those test scores don't lie).
Ahhhhhh... but making the profession higher-PAYING
does result in smarter people seeking it out-- as opposed to the current state of affairs, in which it is all too often the case that those who can't
do wind up teaching it instead.
Competition for relatively rare slots in programs or positions afterwards could easily take care of the rest, as long as that competition truly favored the best and brightest (see, Mark-- meritocracy again! Yay, me, staying on topic!
)
The real money problems
do seem to be about gross mismanagement of funds, though. That much is certainly true. But I've seen exactly
zero evidence that running a school
like-- er, or even "by"-- a corporation results in anything good coming of the resulting arrangement. In the one instance, funds are funneled to pork and administration, and in the other funds are siphoned into profits.
If anything, the latter seems to exacerbate the already bad problems.
Merit pay is a total nonstarter unless teachers actually regain the ability to say "no" to stupid curriculum components and edicts from on high that do nothing but make less time available in classrooms for real learning.
