I’m in Indiana. Teacher pay here is abysmal. Now they have school vouchers. Up to $6000 from the state if you send your kid to a private school. Not even a peep about a teacher pay hike.
My daughter has had shitty teachers almost every year she’s been in school. We pulled her out of school last semester and put her in online school because of bullying, but the local online school program run by the county school system was utter shit (she’s in 7th grade and they were having her read 17th century texts because they were public domain) and the teachers there were even more inept and worthless. This semester we’ve put her in a state-sponsored online program, meaning there’s no tuition, but it’s contracted out to Pearson. Pearson is an evil company in many ways, but they must pay their teachers better because after just one day of online school and sitting through their lessons with my daughter as the school’s required parent “learning coach,” I can already tell that they’re actually decent. And responsive. All of them have told the kids to email, phone or even text them whenever they need to. Despite the fact that each online class has over 70 kids in it.
This online school is going to be challenging, even with me to help her through it, but I can tell just with this short time with the teachers and looking at the curriculum that she’s going to get a better education this way. It’s kind of infuriating that it had to come to this for her to get an education she deserves.