Do teachers need advanced degrees?

All things considered, it's much better than it's made out to be.

Teaching is pretty stable, offers pensions, unionized, yearly adjusted for CPI, opportunities to increase pay schedule + extra pay with extra curriculars / duties, lots of time off, good hours.

Don't get me wrong. There are issues and it does depend on the district (US).

Now the aides..

Well, the way you get instant raises in the public school system is by completing more advanced degrees

They're already paid better than adjunct professors or grad students which is the normal career path for people with advanced degrees.

Most public K-12 teachers teach 9 months out of the year. So annualizing that salary gets you to $64,149. Supposing a two income household of two teachers earning that amount ($128,299), the household would be earning a good bit above the median household income of $83,730.

this. there's almost no fiscal incentive to even BE a teacher, let alone a well-educated one.

When you overpay teachers, people who hate teaching, and hate being teachers, will become teachers for the money.

Is a good idea to select the people who hate teaching to become teachers?

I think a lot of teaching jobs are like that.

If you were good at teaching STEM, I think you could probably work nearby in a STEM job for more money.

It depends on the grade though: no degree would probably be fine for a kindergarten teacher, but I'd be a little concerned if a high school math/science teacher had zero post-secondary experience, especially if this were at a school where most students are planning on attending university.

My mother was one of those teachers that had questionable qualifications. This was a problem from time to time as different government edicts and local authority changes made teachers effectively reapply for their jobs.

Eventually she did get a degree, albeit with my father writing up most of the assignments, however, I was underwhelmed by this. I felt that it was quite an indulgence for just a piece of paper.

Subject matter does matter. My mother was teaching art which might as well have been craft. What she brought to the class was experience, experience in crafts and experience existing as a money-making artist. She also knew a few people.

Few in academia could match her skill set and there were no complaints. It didn't matter that she was practically illiterate when it came to writing.

Fwiw, in 1900 my grandfather taught school in Washington State. He was 16 years old.

I don't know how good he was, just saying it wasn't so long ago.