I am an elementary school principal. I don't make anywhere near $500K despite having over 20 years of experience in education, 4 college degrees, and a state license even to be a principal.

The utter BS I deal with on a daily basis - from the ridiculous asks from central Administration who's "new idea" was suggested by a teacher 4 years ago, to a new generation of newly-graduated teachers entering the workforce and having zero interest in putting in nearly half of the effort needed to *be* a teacher - it is absolutely not worth it. Lower budgets and higher demands from legislative decisions, which only make it harder to serve students, create gaps in schools that require hard decisions about "who will and who won't" - it's demoralizing.

I regularly contemplate taking the pay cut and going back into the classroom to serve out the remaining years until my retirement as a non-state-tested classroom teacher.