The market has plenty of evidence that better education leads to significant economic benefit[0]. Specifically, high quality education, which requires highly trained teachers, leads to higher economic growth (0.63 percentage points per half of a standard deviation of test scores, normalized against other factors)
Surprisingly, there’s evidence that paying teachers more does lead to better teachers. It makes the jobs more competitive, causing an increase in the qualifications and expertise needed to land a job.
0: https://www.educationnext.org/education-and-economic-growth/