In response to:
The thing we need to realize is hat schools are too large. If there is a large school district you need a union to represent the teachers. If there were hundreds (perhaps thousands) of school districts in Chicago, then each school could be run by parental participation, not get lost in the Bureaucracy. If the many small districts competed for teachers with wages and benefits, then there would be no need for a union as each person becomes a contractor to a small unit.
It is time to bust the large school districts up. Let each school vote and let each parents control ones own child's education. If people can vote with their feet individuals get the best, or worst depending on each person's own preferences.
Kevlar wrote: Lots of us owe our love of numbers to our Public School Education.
40 percent is the drop-out rate for Chicago Public School Children
40 percent is how many Chicago Public School Teachers won’t send their kids to any public school…not even in Suburbia
40 percent of Chicago Public School 8th Graders rated “basic” and 36 percent rated “below basic” so nearly 80% were not proficient in reading
40 thousand dollars – average household income of Chicago Tax Payers ----- well over 100 thousand is the average household income of Chicago Public School Teachers
40...
Anyone who has earned a passing grade in Economic 101 knows that the true economic value of any competent employee is equal to what it will cost to replace him if he leaves. In the case of teaching there has been an abundance of teachers since WWII because so many college students who couldn't cut it in more competitive fields changed their majors to education. This was exacerbated in the 60s when Education majors were the last students who were able to obtain Draft deferments.
This last is also why the NEA and the AFT strive to make it more difficult to get a teaching job by adding 'paper' qualifications to the requirements; requirements that can be waived with remarkable ease when the right union member 'needs' a job.
That currency is the "college degree". The more you have of those, the more you are "worth" to the broken system. Degrees are to be collected like baseball cards--and it seems that an "educator" (that's what they call themselves) never has enough of them.
Talent matters not. Degrees matter a great deal. The "standards" of employment require degrees--not talent, or even know-how. If you have the "right" degree, you're employable.
When it takes a Master's Degree to teach a 3rd grader, we have a problem.