North Carolina ends increased pay for teachers holding master degrees

[Yanji]

I don't really qualify as a fiscal conservative in the current far-right US political climate (I believe government should try to realize important outcomes for the people at a low cost, not that less government is always better) but I don't think it's wrong to question whether a Master's degree actually makes people better teachers. MA/MEd degrees for public school teachers are among the most common evening/distance degrees out there because of the way teacher compensation works in most states, and many of them are so "soft" or irrelevant that they're unlikely to make students better teachers. I think teachers should get an automatic pay increase if they've conducted scholarly work in some sort of thesis/research Master's degree (or even a coursework degree, as long it's relevant), but if a biology teacher gets a MA in Liberal Studies from Hicktown State, I don't think they merit extra pay just because they have a piece of paper which would be largely worthless in the "real world" anyway.

(I believe teaching should be a more respected profession and that all teachers should get paid more)