The teachers are making the same amount of money regardless of what school they work at. Most school districts have had pay scales based on amount of college ed

The teachers are making the same amount of money regardless of what school they work at. Most school districts have had pay scales based on amount of college education (degrees and credit hours) and longevity in the district. That is starting to change but there doesn't seem to be a good way to judge "merit" when determining teacher pay at the moment. Teaching jobs in wealthy areas can often be vastly easier than in poor areas and as such they are highly desirable and hard to get due to a lack of teachers leaving those positions. When you teach at a school in a wealthy neighborhood you can expect great parental involvement, an active PTA that picks up the slack during budget shortfalls etc. When you work at a poor school you can expect to be a counselor, get little to no parental involvement and have to deal with tons of issues tangential to education. Teachers don't last long, the average teacher is only expected to last 3-5 years in the field. A few anecdotes. The school district my wife teaches in pays for no PE teachers due to budget shortfalls. Three of the elementary schools in town have PE teachers that show up between three and four days per week entirely funded by the schools PTAs. The elementary schools in wealthy neighborhoods send home supply lists with items like paper, pencils, crayons, paper towels and kleenex. The parents send all that stuff in. The poor schools have that provided but once it's gone there isn't any more because the parents can't afford to pick up the slack. The school my wife teaches at is Title I provision G. That means the kids get all three of their meals at school during the week. 40% of the students at her school are classified as being "in transition" which is a bureaucratic way of saying homeless. There's a lot more money being spent at my wife's school than the "good" schools but most of it isn't spent on education, it's spent on the basic needs of the kids.