Ok. For once I will refuse to bite on an emotionally charged debate. My contribution to this thread is as follows:
1) No public school district in this country that I am aware of requires a masters degree of its teachers.
2) Starting pay for a teacher in Cobb County (Atlanta whitey-ville suburb) is around $32k, with longevity raises of about $1.5k per year.
3) High school teachers are not paid more than elementary school teachers. As a matter of fact, my wife makes more as an elementary school teacher than she did as a high school teacher because some BS demographic study identifies her school as "at-risk" ("No Child Left Behind" idiocy at its finest)
4) Yahoo lists are, for the most part, completely incorrect.
5) I guess I will contribute to the emotional debate insofar as to say that the whole Cobb County evolution/creation blowup was massively blown out of proportion by the national media, most likely to pander to the Northeasterners who love to revel in their opinion that they are so far superior to all of us who live below the Mason-Dixon line. It really wasn't that big of a deal down here. We teach evolution in Cobb County, and in every county in Georgia, as far as I know.