How much is a good teacher worth? A different aspect of quantitative vs. qualitative.

While reading through some teaching blogs on Wordpress I stumbled upon this interesting post about the monetary worth of a teacher. The post describes how teachers who save communities money when keeping students from dropping out and potentially engaging in destructive/criminal behavior (there is additional author/research information in the post for those who are interested). Initially I thought - Great! What an interesting way to consider the relevance of a teacher in a community. Soon after I became uncomfortable with the idea of placing a monetary amount on good teaching, or even the effects of good teaching. After a bit of thinking I had deconstructed my distaste for the idea to be rooted in the age old discussion of "the perils of quantitative assessment". Do we really want to place a dollar amount on teaching, is that the only language we now understand? If we can not separate the value of critical thinking from the principles of our monetary world, how can we motivate our students to believe what we are teaching has value. Isn't any quantity of a quality learning experience the most desired feature in the classroom? Ultimately, the idealist in me wants to separate the learning environment from money and numbers altogether (unless of course we are talking about mathematics). This whole idealistic thought process sort of took me by surprise, and I chuckled to myself as my "wisdom" of the inner workings of the "real world" mocked me. Regardless, I stand by the notion that the learning environment needs to maintain a component of idealism that is entirely separate from the language of our consumerist economy. It is a realistically attainable idea.