Teacher recruiting wouldn't be so hard if pay weren't lockstep, as it is in so many places. Unions demand this, and it keeps some potentially-effective teachers out of the profession (and keeps old lousy ones in, unfortunately).
Disclosure: I was one of those teachers for a semester, many years ago.
Also, teacher pay is not as rigid as it seems. In my state, the good teachers advance by moving to better paying districts. Very few teachers stay in rural districts for more than a year or two.
One thing that is truly bonkers about K12 education is that they can get tenure in just a few years. This is much faster (and easier) than a professor getting tenure. But they both result in the near-inability to be fired.
My mom was a public high school teacher. When I described the conditions of working as an adjunct, her knee jerk reaction was: "That's why teachers have a union."
I’m not sure if the pay increase of moving the city balances out anyways with the increase in housing costs.
This is an unhelpful, anti-union sentiment with no actual relevance to the problem of teacher recruiting.
How would it be easier to recruit new, potentially-effective teachers if we had incentive pay based on meritocratic pay scales? There is no rational way to credit someone from a different area for their ability to run a classroom effectively until there's evidence on how that person runs a classroom.
First, the issue with teacher pay is that it is low. OP and you would instead say that the issue is that it's not low enough for some low performers, and that such a correction would lead new teachers to enter the market. Is there an economics study that shows a similar phenomenon occurring?
> I would be more likely to go into teaching if I thought it could be a good place to work and I would be paid fairly.
I doubt this, because if you cared you would get enough of the mostly-useless degrees in order to get to a pay level that makes sense for you.
Anyway, there are private institutions you could go teach for; instead I hear you saying that you could do better than these unionized public school teachers if your assured brilliance were recognized monetarily.
I'm not sure the point of your last comment. Of course everyone wants to be paid fairly for what they accomplish, which is not just based on intelligence, but also hard work. I have done a very good job educating my own children and have seen enough laziness in our public schools that I'm certain I would be more effective than a great many of the teachers.
But more importantly, if the incentives were aligned then even better teachers would enter, perhaps leaving me in the bottom part of the distribution. Nothing would make me happier than if schools were filled with teachers who were so effective!