It's tempting to view defined benefit plans as something very valuable, but they are not an unalloyed good for whoever receives them. It's common for participation in such a plan to require a teacher (or firefighter, policeman, etc.) to forgo collecting some, or all, of the social security benefits they would otherwise be eligible for thanks to provisions in federal law like Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO). Rolling these back to some extent (the argument is that they were well intentioned, but went too far) is the subject of active political lobbying, and has been for some time. [0] [1]

There are a few particularly broken things about the current system. A worker's potential ineligibility to receive their spouse's social security survivor's benefits is a big one. It is not uncommon for the WEP to kick in and prevent a person with a defined benefit pension from receiving any of their spouse's survivor benefits, whereas if they had never worked a day in their life, they would receive it.

[0] https://www.aft.org/news/educators-fight-keep-their-social-s... [1] https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/how-w...