From an Education Week/Politics K-12 blog post on a Q&A with U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education James H. Shelton at the National Conference of State Legislature’s forum in Washington on December 6th:

Challenged by a state lawmaker over the idea that teachers were facing a stress on competition at the expense of collaboration, Shelton stressed that the two were not in fact incompatible in the profession. And he stressed the need for teaching to become a more prestigious profession. As an example of that last point, he said that when he attended parties in Washington, he saw that people often had the same awkward, muted reactions when they met teachers as when they met stay-at-home moms. (my emphasis)