North Carolina ends increased pay for teachers holding master degrees

[sanantone]

Currently, the standards for teachers are way too low in most of America to justify higher pay to the extent you're suggesting. In other developed countries, most of which far out-achieve the US in education, such as Finland, Hong Kong and the UK, the government takes a much harder line on education and demand more from people who want to be teachers. I think I mentioned before how you can get certified to teach in Massachusetts in any subject as long as you can pass the MTEL, which itself is an extremely simple test. Most other states have barely higher standards. I understand wanting to allow people to career switch into teaching, but when most other countries generally require the equivalent of at least 30 credits of formal education in the subject you want to teach plus an education degree/certificate, I think most lower-income American education districts will fail to be competitive on an international level. With that being said, I reject the idea that American education is "broken", because there are plenty of good public schools in the US and at the end of the day it's a combination of racial inequality, income disparity and weak government which leads to poorly-performing schools. There's a reason why Prince George's County in MD has terrible schools and Fairfax County in VA, just across the Potomac, has great schools, and teachers themselves are only a very small part of that equation.

I don't think the U.S. public education system is significantly worse than that of other developed nations. The main thing the U.S. has to contend with is child poverty. UNICEF looked at 35 developed nations and the U.S. had the second highest child poverty rate. One of the most important factors in a child's success in school is parental involvement. Children who come from economically disadvantaged families are more likely to have less parental involvement. Even when you place impoverished students into private schools, their performance is not going to significantly improve in most cases. The best thing many European countries have done for education is to almost dramatically reduce child poverty. The only reasons why some charter schools perform better than some public schools in most cases is that there is

1. Self selection bias. Parents who attempt to enroll their children in a charter school tend to be parents who are involved in their child's education. (The same thing applies to private schools.)
2. Charter schools regularly reject special education students.
3. Charter schools can expel students for underperformance.
4. Charter schools will reject applicants if they feel like the parent is not going to be very involved during the interview.

Map: How 35 countries compare on child poverty (the U.S. is ranked 34th)

It's more about attitudes toward education. Does the student want to learn? Did the student's parents instill a culture in him/her that values education? Then, there are other factors such as coming from single-parent homes and having a parent(s) who works two jobs and is rarely home to monitor what the student is doing.

Are Private Schools Really Better? - TIME

There is one school district in my city I know a lot about because I've lived in the same area of town my whole life and attended that school district since kindergarten. The lowest performing schools in that district just happen to have the highest percentage of economically disadvantaged students. The highest performing schools are located in the wealthiest part of the district. People are often under the assumption that one school is better than another because the test scores are better. The truth is that affluent students are generally going to perform better on tests no matter which school they attend.