DY:
You wrote: “If you cut teachers’ salaries, you end up with unqualified teachers.”
Good point. What is so painful to us all is that this is not just a prediction. It has been happening everywhere. There are many who look to enter the chinuch field, having spent their most productive years (for training in a potential job skill) in kollel, which contributed little to nothing for classroom management or curriculum development. These young men (and women) may have all the dedication of the Yidden who contributed to the building of the mishkan. However, the psukim there spell out that the tasks were completed by those with the specific talents and skills. Check that out in this week’s parsha. But without the skills, these wonderful people cannot function well, and are stuck resorting to discipline and crowd control strategies to manage a classroom, where the majority of the task needs to be education.
Yes, we already have too many unqualified teachers and rebbeim. The situation has improved noticeably (while salaries did not) by virtue of several training programs for mechanchim and related resources. One must credit Torah Umesorah for leading the way, with several other programs that accomplish a lot. But we are still far from doing the job that needs to be done, and our children are at risk of paying the price.
Even if we insure that all entering mechanchim are duly qualified, there will still be inadequate pay, and the problem won’t go away by fixing the qualification problem.