Teachers' master's degrees are, in effect, a way to divert money from (mostly) teachers and (a little bit, some places) school districts to universities for no

Teachers' master's degrees are, in effect, a way to divert money from (mostly) teachers and (a little bit, some places) school districts to universities for no actual benefit, so that's great. Hope they manage to keep it up and that spreads. OTOH it'd be nice if there were still a way to reward teachers who'd done a real and relevant master's (which very few of them do now), but I don't think anyone's interested in nailing down that distinction. It's not even just degree mills, either, AFAIK the vast majority of postgraduate programs aimed at teachers are designed, primarily, to be pretty easy to pass and to have relatively low time commitments. They all want a piece of that action, and if they increase the rigor demand for their product will drop because a hypothetical very hard, non-bullshit teaching master's from a prestigious school brings the same pay bump as a very bullshit one from a third-rate state school.