Not to comment about your wife, but the notion is that if teaching is reputable & pays well enough, they will be able to attract to the profession more of the i

Not to comment about your wife, but the notion is that if teaching is reputable & pays well enough, they will be able to attract to the profession more of the incredible individuals who as teachers can motivate & draw in those unmotivated students. I'm not sure if case-studies can cover this particular notion. It's a big picture problem, like not enough women in engineering. You could try to make the perverse counter-argument, that pathetic salaries actually selects for people who care so much about the kids they will self-sacrifice and perhaps those people are more likely to be the phenomenal-teacher variety, but I've never seen evidence to support that. Anyway my ultimate point is that whether or not increasing teacher pay to the level they deserve fixes education and saves under performing students, shouldn't preclude paying teachers what they deserve! But perhaps it is simply an unrelated issue that is not relevant.