This paper examines the quality and compensation of school teachers in the U.S. from 1964 to 2013.  An increasing debate over the inability of schools to attract promising and high-ability candidates to the teaching profession is rooted in the hypothesis of lower wages. Additionally, the literature shows positive correlation between teachers' talent and students' achievement.  I use the March Current Population Survey from 1964 to 2013 to document the relative wages of teachers. I compare teachers’ compensation to the rest of the private sector and find that relative wages began to decrease after early 1980s, when an increase in technological changes accelerated “skill premiums,” raising the U.S. wage inequality. Using the National Longitudinal Survey, I document the quality of teachers. Standardized tests are used as a proxy for teachers’ quality.  Over the years, the probability of those able individuals joining the teaching profession has declined. This paper also builds a Roy model to examine how wages in alternative occupations affect an individual’s choice to join teaching.  To empirically test the self-selection into teaching, I use Heckman’s two-step estimator, and find negative selection into teaching over years.