The incentives just are not properly aligned. I went to an urban school system that paid many teachers quite well (upwards of $130k 10 years ago for many), but

The incentives just are not properly aligned. I went to an urban school system that paid many teachers quite well (upwards of $130k 10 years ago for many), but the pay was just totally ubcorrelated with teacher performance. Many of the worst teachers were the best paid because they had seniority and that was how the union had structured pay agreements, whereas many of the younger better teachers were paid very poorly (around $50k in a major metro) despite having left very high paying professional jobs to give back. The problem is that there is little-to-no economic incentive to do anything to improve student performance.