> You're taking it as a given that people perceive education to not be a demanding career, and I find that incredibly absurd. It's comically wrong. People choo

> You're taking it as a given that people perceive education to not be a demanding career, and I find that incredibly absurd. It's comically wrong. People choosing education for that reason are in for a rude awakening. Many of that sort figure that out during their student-teaching phase, I suppose. Lots of teachers also leave within the first few years, and it's pretty much never because they found it too easy. It's a hard job, with an abusive strain of "you should make this sacrifice—for the children, you know, and of course we won't compensate you in any way, because we're not going to sacrifice for the kids, don't be silly" running through it, and bad pay, especially if you've got the kind of mind, interpersonal skills, and work-ethic we'd hope the median teacher would have. Reports I've heard of truly bad teachers in-the-wild are mostly ones who are power-tripping jerks who like being "liked" by (some of) the kids (and who are typically fairly dumb, besides), not ones who are hanging around for an easy job where they can sponge off the taxpayer, because that's not really what it's like. The bad ones who stick around, it's not mainly because admin can't get rid of them, but for the same "admin has no idea WTF is going on with them" visibility-problems that are also common in private industry, plus they aren't necessarily totally bad at the job, in the ways that are being measured. Teacher efficacy measurements keep being attempted, and keep turning out to be so noisy they're nearly useless—even ones you'd expect to work, turn out not to, when you look at the statistics. That part's an unsolved problem that, believe me, plenty of teachers wouldn't mind seeing solved (they don't like their bad co-workers, either) though none of them like it when crappy solutions are pushed, since, you know, they don't actually work and are highly likely to punish/reward practically randomly.