Andy Rotherham comments in Time Magazine on the AEI/Heritage Foundation teacher pay study (see my last email):

Bottom line: Saying teachers are systematically overpaid or persistently underpaid not only obscures the reality of the education landscape, it ignores a key lever that policymakers could be using to improve teacher effectiveness, i.e., paying the good ones more. Today, as a country, we don't have the teaching force we need. Although raising salaries won't fully offset problems like lousy working conditions or inept management that repel many would-be teachers, pay is obviously one important tool to attract and retain great teachers.

So from where I sit, we should pay teachers more but we should also pay them differently. Linking those two issues seems the best way through the current logjam.

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School of Thought