Lousy schools, lousy teacher incentives

Whoa. I didn't know high school drop-out rates were this bad. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that public schools have found ways to hide it. While I'm on the subject of education, I may as well link to this paper, which diagnoses another problem with our education system:

There are two main hypotheses for the decline in the aptitude of public school teachers since 1960: improved job opportunities for females in other occupations and the compression of teaching wages owing to unionization.... The evidence suggests that compression of teaching wages is responsible for about three-quarters of the decline in teacher aptitude.