My colleague, Diana Ichikawa, referred me to this article. It makes me both glad and sad for different reasons.

Glad:
* Young people are looking at teaching and realizing that, as careers go, it might be better to choose one where you can have a long-term financial outcome that is appealing. If you are going to give up your income potential in your early years, there has to be a long-term payoff or the career path is less viable.  So, I feel a bittersweet glad for young people who are actively avoiding that fate.

Sad:
* We need a better educated populace. Whether it is reading, writing, mathematics, science, computing, understanding history, etc., we need people to be able to think and communicate effectively.
* We have a society that bashes teachers, has destroyed their pensions in many places, bashes unions (the lack of understanding the contributions of unions in this country is appalling), and compensates people interesting in helping kids very poorly.

Solution?  If local constituents want better, they need to put their money where their mouths are.  Provide real incentives for young people to consider the profession.  Treat teachers with respect and dignity.  Right now, choosing to go into teaching is often accompanied with unpleasantry and untenable, economic madness.  Who wants to make a lifetime out of that?