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What has me doubting my decision to finish my career in the classroom is that despite great successes, I've recognized that I am still "just a teacher" in the eyes of most people.

My day-to-day responsibilities haven't changed in 17 years, and are no different than the responsibilities of the first year teachers in my building. While I am currently working for an administrative team that believes in empowering teachers, I still find myself wanting more input in conversations related to education at all levels.

Teaching is truly a "flat profession."

So wrote Bill Ferriter last week on The Tempered Radical (a repost of a column he wrote several years ago on education's "glass ceiling"). And of course, he is not alone in this concern. Teachers across the country voice similar complaints. A possible solution to the problem he describes? Stratifying teaching, creating school-level leadership positions for teachers who want to stay in the classroom while taking on new challenges.

Policymakers are listening, to some degree - as Ferriter points out, there are successful stratification models being tried across the country. The ideas of career ladders, of "master teachers" who mentor and/or evaluate their colleagues and of teacher-led schools are catching on.

But as he points out,

[T]hese initial efforts are slow to develop and to be embraced by a society that largely still views teaching as something slightly less than professional work. Until these perceptions change, teachers will continue to be forced to make the difficult decision to remain "just a teacher" or leave the part of the profession that they love the most.

Of course, some in the education debate might argue that there is no longer a need for career teachers, that we can accept rotating new teachers in and out of the system every five years or so.

But compare this to the situation in, for example, South Korea, a country where there is a deep respect for the teaching profession and teacher turnover is just one percent per year. And whose students outperformed students in the US on reading, math and science standardized tests. To be fair, it is a very different country, facing very different challenges and with a very different education system. But (to the extent that one trusts international test score comparisons) they are doing something right. Might it be how they recruit, train, retain and respect their educators?