It's an incredibly shit deal, currently, and the only reason it's not already a crisis (instead, a kind of slow-motion catastrophe) is that many teachers feel like they'd be abandoning the kids if they left the career. They're staying only because they feel morally obligated to—the work environment's mediocre at best (and has been trending worse for years), and the pay's bad and getting worse relative to the alternatives practically by the day.

Wages are falling really far behind even the kinds of careers HN types joke about, the ones that humanities and liberal arts majors end up in if they don't just work at Starbucks—and guess what sorts of jobs the top 20% or so of teachers with some years of experience can walk straight into? Yep, exactly those jobs. Hell, the comp at one gas station chain around here is on par with a mid-career teacher in the area, after you've been there a couple years, and you don't need a degree to get that job. If you're an assistant manager by five years in (and if you're bright enough to be someone we want teaching, you will be) you'll be out-earning local teachers with more experience than that. W. T. F.

So, good for the upcoming crop of students, they shouldn't get a teaching degree, it's an astonishingly horrible deal and unlikely to get better.