To go along with movies and remaking the vision of teachers: from Florida...

[Sancho]

5. actually, that's not exactly correct...

we have know for decades that demographics, changes in simple things (like immigration laws, a new factory, etc), social changes (like the draft, war on drugs, birth control) ALL make greater impact on test scores than individual teachers, teacher training, or teacher selection. Why? Teachers are fairly homogeneous. National Merit Scholars go to medical school (or whatever). Competitive money makers go to business. In other words - it's a myth that changing teachers will make a great difference (or salaries or college classes). It would help if teachers were matched with situations they fit in for efficiency. It would also help if our systems learned lessons from some European and Eastern schools that have some good programs. Salaries cannot change enough in most schools to either motivate or change teacher behavior.

The movie makes the correlation. I can't say if it was implying anything about salaries. I do know (from decades of experience) that my wife and I easily double our salaries when we leave teaching, but we enjoy teaching.