Why are teachers leaving such a critical job?

Teachers throughout the U.S. are quitting due to low pay, and burnout. The average salary in Mesa County for a teacher is $26/ hour during the summer school rate, from teaching summer school, and tutoring. A garbage collector on average gets paid 11-24/hour, according to Payscale.com, this is important because being a garbage collector is a less desirable job, but even people with unwanted jobs get paid almost as much as a teacher.

Brittany Smith, A teacher at Fruita 8/9 says “ When significant amounts of teachers have to work second jobs to make ends meet or have to make their families go without things other professionals have then I would say that signals a systemic problem that needs to be addressed.”  an important statement because This reflects many teachers' opinions that they are underappreciated, 

Another factor of teachers quitting is burnout. Jen Jurgens, a SPED teacher at Mesa View Elementary commented on this issue by saying, “The district as well as the state is making it harder to deal with situations.” She later says “,Teacher’s are pressured more and more to get test scores higher and higher,”  This helps with burnout because teachers are constantly having to up the scores from the year prior and it's hard to get higher test scores from kids, the best you can do is teach them.

With all this being said, why are teachers not given what they need to meet the needs of the next generation successfully? Or be able to not dread going to work every day?