Pay Teachers Well? What a Concept!

Interesting article in the New York Times yesterday about a charter school that is recruiting extremely talented teachers and paying them a (gasp!) professional salary of $125,000 (about 2 1/2 times the national average). The school opens next year. I hope the NYT does a follow-up article. I've often wondered what would happen if we valued education the same way we value, say, medicine. How would it transform our classrooms if we trained our teachers, compensated them, held them accountable, and held them in the same esteem as we do doctors? Not that I see such a seismic shift occurring, but I'll be curious to see how this charter school fares.