Ok, Janet - let's look at it another way. Let's pay Rachael as you would pay your baby sitter (since you don't seem to have much of an opinion of her professional creditials).

Let's say conservatively that she teaches elementary school, and has 24 kids (that's a low number for most schools, but we'll run with it).

24 kids x $3.00 per hour x 8 hours = $576 per day. I don't know about you, but I pay my sitters at least $5 per hour, but we'll stick to $3 for your sake.

$576 x 180 days (they actually work more than that with inservice etc...) = $103,680 per year. Take off taxes, and Rachel would be left with about $70K to live it up with - double her current salery before taxes.

Now, lets review. Using your numbers, and a very low hourly rate, we come up with an absurd salery.

Teachers work more than 8 hour days when you look at what work they bring home to do at night.

Teachers work more than 180 days per year (and besides, society wants summers off for kids - thats not the teachers fault so don't blame them). If you want summers off - try being a teacher instead of complaining about it.

If we paid teachers like you want, who would do it?