Advocates say that baby-boom teachers will soon begin retiring in large numbers. To replace them, salaries must rise, so teaching can compete with pay in other professions. Well, law is mentioned, and medicine and accounting. I submit that those comparisons are unrealistic. Nor do schools have to pay that much to get qualified applicants.
Good schools attract good teachers.
Where students are disruptive and disrespectful, parents apathetic, and administration ineffective, education languishes. Granted, teachers deserve a living wage. They are getting one. The days of genteel poverty are long past. The present pay negotiations system seems to work well.