I've long felt that the best ways for teachers to get what they deserve is for them to open themselves up to real evaluation. Pre-test/post-test. Once this happens, the true stars will be able to command quite a premium. Although the teachers fear such a day, I believe the perceptive administrators fear it more because they will enter into bidding wars for the top teachers, and lose their jobs if they don't get and keep them.

Perhaps the answer will lie in something like The Teaching Company attracting the best and brightest teachers and selling their lectures for the expository parts of instruction, and your average teacher will be reduced to a glorfied Teaching Assistant (TA).