Comment by Herring
4 days ago
That's half true. You have to think about cost of living, you can't just compare across the globe like that. And especially opportunity cost. In the US, teacher pay lags behind similarly educated professionals.
But you're right after a certain point other factors matter more than simple $ per student. Unfortunately one of those factors is teacher pay <=> teacher quality.
From the teacher's I've talked to, it's teacher work conditions related to student behavior that are creating more problems than anything else.
Disruptive students in particular who negatively impact everyone around them but for whatever reason, are frequently not removed from the environment. It's also driving a lot of good teachers into retirement.
When you see clusters of poor performance, my guess is that it's associated with regional policy creating a poor environment rather than a total absence of quality teachers.