Raising pay moves the bell curve a little bit to the right. It allows people to stay a teacher even though they could get a higher paying job instead of having a large percentage of them being someone who couldn't get another job. It won't fix everything, but it will help.
Sure, but because there are so many teachers (about 1 for every 30 households), every $250/yr raise per teacher is over a billion dollars per year and $8/yr per household.
If it will take $20K/yr more to meaningfully nudge the competency curve, that’s ~$700/yr extra for every household. It’s probably even worse than that, though, because in wealthy areas (who might be better able to weather a $700/yr tax increase), teachers are probably already paid more than the average, meaning the lowest paid teachers, the ones most in need of a raise, are likely working in an area with lower income residents in the tax base.
