(RALEIGH) -- While policy makers say classroom teachers are important, are the best and brightest teaching our children?  One USA Today editorial contributor says that may not be the case.

Phillip Whitmire says for many years some of the best and brightest women chose teaching because other careers were not open to them. But in recent decades, as the corporate landscape leveled, more opportunities opened up for women, and they moved to different fields.

Whitmire says teachers in the classrooms in the United States are not celebrated and respected the way that their counterparts are in other countries. He says other countries consider teaching the highest calling, and the U.S. does not put forth the same effort toward recruiting the best and brightest to shape the minds of young American students. "Consider Finland and North Korea... it's prestigious to go in to teaching in those countries, and it's not here... teaching is not considered a prestigious profession in [the U.S.], so it doesn't draw top graduates.  And that's a real problem."

Phillip Whitmire is a writer for USA Today and an author of several books on education.