We've entered late-stage Idiocracy.

Paper 1: www.shankerinstitute.org/sites/defaul...
Paper 2: edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1127
Paper 3: www.schoolfinancedata.org/the-adequacy...

Right - a root problem in many cases/states is the equitable and adequate distribution of school funding to be able to recruit/retain the quality teacher workforce we need.

I also agree that there can be cross-over benefits of seemingly unrelated degrees (especially those that involve credentials across specific student populations). Again, one problem is the explosion of lower quality credentials.

This has only gotten worse, even though some of the predatory programs during this period started to flatten out or decline, others entered the market or grew even larger.

Of course, the real trick is defining what we mean by "improved performance" and how to operationalize that. Separate note, many of those masters attained are about diversifying credentials (special ed, etc.) to open up job options, not about improving practice in current field.

Therein lies the problem - that we've created a market for quality-neutral graduate degrees - and they've blown up over the decades (from an old post) schoolfinance101.com/2012/12/01/e...

2. Charter schools statewide in FL and in Miami-Dade have lower overall outcomes than district schools (in same county) when controlling for students served: