(12-31-2012, 07:29 AM)kandrathe Wrote: Is there a real marketplace for teaching positions? If a better teacher moves into the district would anyone be displaced? Would you pay better ones more, of just the ones with the most seniority?
That's the wrong place to look for a market - even optimally, that would just shuffle the best teachers to the higher-paying (or more sought after) jobs, which is not a clear gain for a public service.
Where the incentives need to change is at the level of good students picking their college majors, and at the level of the certification necessary to teach. If you raise the wages and raise the bar for entry, making teachers less like civil servants and more like lawyers or doctors, then you will get a better qualified body of teachers. But so long as wages are mediocre, working conditions pretty miserable, and barriers to entry very low (easiest degree in most universities), then you're going to end up with low quality teachers.
-Jester