I can say that at least in Virginia, SOL scores are everything. The same scores are used to rate both teacher effectiveness and student success, which I feel is unfair to both parties. It encourages teachers to focus on the standardized test objective of the week rather than encouraging an environment of discovery and learning, and students to gamify the system rather than engage and invest themselves in their education.

I've had great teachers and I've had terrible teachers. I don't think any teacher sets out to be one of the bad teachers, I think the amount of things teachers go through (low pay, unnecessary hoops to jump through, etc) just grinds a person down.

Maybe they don't set out to be bad teachers.

But the way it is set up now, education does seem to get a fair share of people looking for an easy path. Not sure this is the best group to be educating our youth.

You get what you pay for.

You get no more than you pay for. You don't always get what you pay for.