Raising teacher status

I was currently reading this article about raising teachers' statuses. In this article, according to Andreas Schleicher, places like Korea, Singapore, and Finland are starting to only recruit high-performing college graduates for teaching jobs, help them with mentoring and other help in the classroom, and take steps toward raising respect for the profession. He mentioned that teaching in the United States isn't a high-status occupation anymore. He also said how he does not believe that short days and summers off make this job easy and that dedicated teachers in the U.S. work long hours for little pay and get insufficient support from their leadership.

There was a conference, convened by the federal Department of Education, that was expected to bring together education ministers and leaders of teachers' unions from 16 different countries, also state superintendents from 9 American states. The Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, said he was hoping education leaders would come to the conference and use it to share strategies for raising student achievement. This meeting occurs when teachers' rights, roles, and responsibilities are being widely debated in the U.S..

Our own President Obama said, "In South Korea, teachers are known as ‘nation builders,’ and I think it’s time we treated our teachers with the same level of respect."

The article also mentions that raising the teachers' statuses is not about raising their pay but it is a very important factor.