I agree that for what they do, teachers are seriously underpaid, but that's just a personal opinion after seeing the amount of backbreaking work my kids' teachers do.
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Maybe
Maybe not
Some teachers work long hours helping students and doing lesson preparations and grading essays, etc. Others do not. They assign easy to grade multiple guess exams, etc.
Teachers have 10 weeks off in summer plus another 3+ weeks off per working season.
Teachers cannot get stock options (many of which are not worthwhile) but they can retire in MA with substantive pensions. My neighbor retires next year at age 55 with >60% of his peak income. Compared to someone without such a public sector pension (i.e. high tech employees) it is equivalent to having the better part of 1 million dollars saved in a govt bond interest bearing account. Not that bad. Lots of folks don't have ~ $700K in the bank at 55. But hey, maybe that's just Massachusetts.

-p (just realized that I am continuing working to pay for this)