We don't pay them well so we get what we pay for. The exceptions are those that love to teach and love students. You can't run an organization via exceptions however. It's really a shame we don't value education more.
The system is setup very defensively to protect the problem teachers from responsibility.
It seems like it is less of a problem than it used to be. The biggest issue is that the districts with failing schools (who need the best, most experienced teachers) tend to be the districts least able to recruit those kinds of teachers.
> The system is setup very defensively to protect the problem teachers from responsibility.
The same system also protects the good teachers from problem parents and administrators.
This might sound nit-picky but I think we all (Americans) value education as a whole. We just don't care (as a whole) about education for others outside of our sphere.
When you have the ability to move to better school system or to pay for private school attendance, you have no need to improve public schools. Not all public school systems are bad. I image that everyone can think of one relatively close school that they can unequivocally call a good/great school system where they expect most student to exceed by some set of positive metrics
As long as the people who can fix it (no matter if its more staff, better pay, better resources or whatever change necessary) can place their children into C-Level Preparatory Academy, Dumpster Fire High School probably won't see much improvement.
Everything you wrote after that sounds exactly like we don't value education as a whole. We individually value getting a good education but far too frequently ignore how education as a whole is beneficial to society.
That's a bunch of crap. If we (Americans) valued education as a whole, we wouldn't vote for leaders who continually cut education budgets. It's very simple: we as a society do not care about education. It's not a top political issue ever, unlike abortion, defense spending, guns, and who uses what bathroom. We keep school funding and administration at the local level because we don't want "our money" going to "those kids" (i.e. poor kids) in some other district, so we all end up with terrible schools and horribly inconsistent results school-to-school. Public education in this country is completely broken, and there's absolutely no political will to change it, and voters don't make it an issue because they're more worried about Planned Parenthood and terrorists.
> We individually value getting a good education but far too frequently ignore how education as a whole is beneficial to society.
Education is the third-biggest item of (combined) US government spending, after healthcare and pensions. Defense is fourth. It accounts for roughly 15% of total spending and 5% of GDP. I found this history of education spending informative regarding "leaders who continually cut education budgets": http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spending
Perhaps Politifact can be used as a barometer of "issues" during elections. They have rated 954 statements about education, 415 about guns, 390 about the military, 377 about terrorism, 316 about abortion, 64 about sexuality (including "bathroom bills"), and 20 or so about Planned Parenthood. Even statements about the federal budget in general (which include many of the previous issues) only totaled 938 items.
The US spends more per student than any other developed world.
I'd say we're paying plenty.
Perks teachers enjoy are variant as you mention, but tend to be solid. My GF is a teacher, her perks are: Contracted for 38 hours / week, 15 sick days a year that roll-over (I think there's some limit), something like 3 weeks of vacation during the school year, summer vacation, pension program, good health insurance, very difficult to be fired from the job.
Also, when looking at teacher salary vs median, realize that they are working a lot less of the year than other people. I did the math between my GF and I and once you account for all her time off, she makes slightly less than I do.
[0]: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_211.60.a... [1]: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio... [2]: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp