I've seen this result from various reports over the years. It's always sad to me to see that education is consistently (okay, with rare exception) the bottom of

I've seen this result from various reports over the years. It's always sad to me to see that education is consistently (okay, with rare exception) the bottom of the barrel on these measures. Of course, teaching high school doesn't require PhD-level math and reasoning skills, but rather some equally rare classroom management and motivational skills. I'm less concerned about high-paying tech skills drawing away potential teachers as I am about high-paying managerial positions drawing away the people with the skills really needed in a classroom. I think being a teacher is much more analogous to being a good manager than to being a good engineer. Take a group of people and get them to focus. Yeah, a high school math teacher is expected to be able to explain single-variable calculus, but there are two components there: understanding it and explaining it so someone else will understand. I definitely find the former much easier. And in elementary school, you just need to be reasonably clueful about arithmetic and science and history and English, not to be able to write a dissertation.