$600/week for a middle school/high school science teacher in Tampa

[Yanji]

Something to add...in CHINA, one can easily make 100-300USD/day (net salary) teaching English. It's a travesty a professional teacher can be paid 600/week (I'm assuming that's gross, not net salary)

A gross overstatement, considering there are somewhat respectable universities in China (i.e. better than simply legitimate) who pay maybe US$1500 a month to English teachers, although rudimentary housing is almost always provided and sometimes per diems as well. Do not believe what you hear in EFL teacher recruiter marketing... they're simply trying to lure the desperate or lost folk in the US/Canada/Oz/etc. Yes, there are some decent paying and even outright respectable English teacher jobs to be found in Asia, including China. But those jobs do not pave the streets of Beijing or Shanghai and they may require previous experience to get. In fact in HK with its "celebrity tutor" culture, good-looking ethnic Chinese tutors could make a killing tutoring English if they had an English degree from a world top 100 school and the right industry connections.

I do not think teachers are paid enough in America but the same could be said about most jobs in America, to be honest. I don't think American education is broken, in fact I think it is still okay overall. When I was attending university in England I had some American classmates who were all from public schools and they were all just as capable as the English educated students. Yes, there is disparity between schools in high-income and low-income areas; yes, teachers are not paid or respected enough; yes, there are problems with school quality control; and yes, America should be doing better but I think education merely reflects the greater social inequalities and injustices in America.