professional standing (or falling?)

From tne Times, a year ago: "By all accounts, the teaching profession is at a crossroads. Since the early 1980's, when a presidential commission and the Carnegie Foundation declared a crisis of confidence in the public schools, attention has increasingly shifted to the poor quality of many teachers and of teacher education programs as sources of what the commission called ''a rising tide of mediocrity.''    
"At first, his friends admired him for being brave and daring enough to teach in what they considered a ghetto school. ''People said, 'Wow, that's so cool, so noble. Aren't you scared?' '' he recalled. But as the years went by, they started asking him when he was going to get a real job."   
"Mr. Plaks is struggling against the cynicism of both people like his mother and some of his colleagues."
"In the last year, he has seen five of his most senior and most skillful colleagues at Public School 192 retire."

They got it wrong. It's not about Social Status. It's about professional image and perception. We are not longer treated as educated professionals, but a production workers with no independent judgement. The legislature here has just passed a new law that will mandate test scores to comprise a minimum of 50% of teacher evaluations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/17/nyregion/as-social-status-sags-teachers-call-it-a-career.html?gwh=638D3268A32FA2B971CE69C10E241E17