TeaSea,

While I tend to agree with you, this really isn't all that practical, at least given the current situation. There are not enough teachers as it is, raising standards now would decrease the already too low number. In the short-term, I believe we'd be better served by increasing overall funding for textbooks, school buildings, extracurriculars, etc. Increasing pay, as you call for, would also be highly beneficial as that would presumably increase the overall number of individuals pursuing teaching careers which would eventually (say, in a decade or so) allow us to raise standards/training requirements.

The problem now is underfunding, particularly in impovershed areas. In many places schools are funded largely by local property taxes, meaning that if you live in a rich area with high property taxes you'll end up going to a well-funded school but if you live in a poor area with low property taxes you'll go to a poorly funded school; party of the vicious cycle of poverty. In my opinion, the US would be much better served by nationalizing school funding; all schools should be funded entirely at the national level according to the number of students they have. Any legislation to this effect would, of course, need to be more sophisticated than that with allowances for differential funding under certain circumstances, but the general direction should be equal funding. Equal and better funding would go a long ways towards solving the problems of the US' primary and secondary education.