If we want to have super high quality teachers it will cost a lot of money but it will be worth it
I read where someone posted that "Teachers are as important as doctors.", in a thread yesterday and after sleeping on it I think that poster is correct.
But how can we attract the highest quality people to this profession? I suggest that high school graduates who are interested in becoming teachers be tested and the top applicants be hired when they graduate high school as teacher trainees. They don't make top pay until they complete their 4 year internship or training program or whatever you want to call it. But we have to pay them well enough to live a decent life on one pay check right from the beginning. That is essential. With periodic raises and adjustments for cost of living. Along with good medical benefits and a pension. No 401(k) stuff.
Another thing all the trainees who are accepted don't pay for their own college either. Their employer(school district) pays for all that. Books too. Employer even pays them their standard hourly rate of pay for every our spent in the classroom.
During this four year training period they will have periodic assessments done by qualified teachers who are willing to work as new teacher trainers. This is not an easy job therefore these trainers will be paid more than an average teacher would make because of that. These periodic assessments would be done by different trainers through the 4 year training period to avoid the chance of any personal conflict.
Reason I like this system is what happens if after racking up 10's of thousands of dollars worth of school debt to become a teacher someone tries it for a while and decides it is just not for them? They are kind of stuck doing a job that they have no interest in doing because they have all this debt now they have to pay off. That isn't a situation that is good for the teacher or the students.
With my plan the person will know long before then if this is what they really want to do. And some who don't realize it for themselves will be washed out of the program before spending all the time and money and getting into debt while training for a job they may actually hate after doing it for a while.
Does this make sense?
Don
= new reply since forum marked as read
If we want to have a better quality of education, why not start by eliminating all the babysitting chores teachers have to perform?
For example, why should they waste their time on standing bus duty, cafeteria duty, playground/recess duty, etc.? Even the time-consuming activities at the early grade levels such as taking attendance, lunch count, etc. could be addressed differently. (And as a side note, there's not much information received at faculty meetings that couldn't be put out in written memos, thus eliminating those tiresome and time-consuming gatherings.)
These necesssary chores could be just as well taken care of by paraprofessionals leaving the teachers with more preparation/professional development time. Their time could be better defined as instructional and targeted toward student learning rather than the corraling of children.
I'm sure there have been studies done on the amount of non-instructional time in which teachers are engaged. I'll Google that and read with interest soon. But I know from experience that there are lost teaching moments during every day due to bookkeeping chores, babysitting chores, etc.
You know, I hardly ever 
find a CEO answering their own phones or making appointments, or doctors manning the sign-in desks in their offices, or lawyers running errands to the Clerk of Court. I wonder why they get to push these mundane tasks off on others? Oh, I know...these tasks are too time consuming and or too menial for a real professional to do. They have too many other things to do that are more important.
And thus the answer to my previous question...we as a society don't consider teachers to be PROFESSIONALS.
Easy squeasy....
Hire teachers to teach; hire bus/cafeteria/outside monitors to monitor. Treat teachers as professionals and pay them as such. Then and only then can we have realistic professional expectations of these dedicated and much maligned group of people.
Maybe this should become a political movement and then some of the millions of dollars of PAC money could be spent to fund the necessary changes. Hey, it could work. 
This PSA announcement brought to you by a retired teacher. You're welcome.
