How is that? In some communities the difference could be between learning to read and finding an appreciation for modernist poetry. Or more drastically, the difference between instilling a sense of civic duty and keeping kids out of prison. We do expect teachers to have a part in all of these things.
Speaking as someone who reads a book per week, and has spent all their life in affluent communities with highly rated educational institutions; I can confidently say that for the overwhelming majority of public schools (even those in rich suburbs), achieving functional literacy with some comprehension and analytic ability for the majority of students is a lofty goal. I do not know of any public school where the difference between a good teacher and a bad one is "between learning to read and finding an appreciation for modernist poetry"; maybe this will be a problem in the future, but it is not something we should be grappling with now.
I am not under the impression that what "keep[s] kids out of prison" is "a sense of civic duty". Good career prospects keep people out of prison; high conscientiousness may be correlated with low rates of imprisonment, but conscientiousness is also a luxury the desperate can ill afford to indulge in.
