I grew up in Appalachia and had a similar experience. More babysitting than education.
I don't think pay will solely fix it, but I have to assume there's some selection bias from it. We only get the staff who are willing to put up with the boards, students, and pay as a whole set.
Those in Appalachia will be living better, but I have a hard time imagining they're [financially] struggling. The wages are generally depressed and so are living expenses.
Their pressures are probably from-above, their peers, and their students. For example, teachers have to pay for a lot out of pocket (or their personal time)
This summarizes the entire problem with much of our education system.
We have not learned as a society how to separate out the many functions we ask the public schools to do, and they manage to poorly all of them.
In theory they exist to educate children, but implicitly they also exist to make the labor force larger by providing free or low-cost child care to families. They're also our front-line child welfare and anti-poverty policy tool, and deeply entangled in our justice system.
A school system that was allowed to filter students out with strict standards purely for disruptiveness would find that they can get much better outcomes than one that must accept all students. (and in the school with the disruptive students the focus can be on finding the root cause and helping rather than on teaching advanced skills)
I don't think pay will solely fix it, but I have to assume there's some selection bias from it. We only get the staff who are willing to put up with the boards, students, and pay as a whole set.
Those in Appalachia will be living better, but I have a hard time imagining they're [financially] struggling. The wages are generally depressed and so are living expenses.
Their pressures are probably from-above, their peers, and their students. For example, teachers have to pay for a lot out of pocket (or their personal time)