The teaching profession doesn’t always benefit from its perception as a vast community service project. It ought to be seen as just what it is: a profession. Raising salaries will require political muscle, but raising prestige can start now.
"Prestige" will come to the US teacher corps when US teachers earn it, maybe through high scores on tests like the GRE and Miller Analogies, and definitely when most teachers are knowledgeable about the subjects they teach. Right now, this just isn't the case, yet very few people seem to want to address this problem. Teaching is a respected profession in other countries, primarily because of high entry requirements.
Prestige is earned.I agree that there are way too many kids in most public school classes and that this makes things very hard for teachers. But lots of people have hard jobs. I don't hear firefighters complaining that they'd do better if someone just paid them more. !!!
I agree that NCLB is a disaster, but let's be honest: most of the adults here started (finished?) school before it came along, and a lot of us faced the same educational deficiencies that our children face. NCLB just made an existing problem worse.
Etc.
Honestly, it's hard for me to understand how people here can complain so bitterly about local teachers/teaching practices, yet not acknowledge that the overall low quality the teacher corps is a serious part of that problem. Yes, there are amazing and intelligent teachers, but they're rare compared to the ones who don't see through the ultimate bad homework questions, and we all know it. And a lot of the good ones quit, leaving us with math teachers who have degrees in "x studies" where x =/= anything technical.
