Can you find a teacher who works only 8 months a year? My wife is a teacher and works all but about 6 weeks. But during the school year, she will work nights, weekends. She is at work by 6am and doesn't get home till 4:30 or 5pm. And you are in the private sector...why don't you tell your boss to tell you when you can have vacation...my wife can't take a vacation DAY. Do you have people calling you lazy each day, or racists, or a bitch? Do you have parents calling you because little Johnny failed a test even though he never did any homework. And then have the administration blame you for not motivating the students enough? Do you have everyone blaming you for how well your company performs?

You can blame the teachers all you want, but remember it is more than the teachers who are the problem. Every time you yell at a teacher for your child's behavior, YOU are the problem. Every time you say that the school is the problem and YOU want to dictate how the teacher performs, YOU are the problem.

Just because you are in the private sector means nothing. How well do you think you would perform at work if every single person who came along thought they were your boss and told you how to do your job?

BTW, every company has incompetent workers. There are some in the school system. There are also some where you work.

Finally, my original point had nothing to do with the teachers...My whole point was to say that removing the teachers union will not fix the education problem....there are much bigger issues than the union.

Several years ago, there was an article that said poor performing schools rose to be a top performing school simply by keeping all the teachers and replacing all poor performing administrative staff (superintendents, principals, etc.) Maybe we should look more to replacing the federal/state/school administrators instead of focusing just on the unions.

I doubt any person complaining about school performance could handle being a teacher for a year with the crap they have to put up with from students, administrators, and parents. It is no wonder that 15% of teachers leave after the first year and 50% of teachers leave within five years.

While I agree that parents should be the expert of their own children, I disagree that unions are the problem with the educational system. There are several other issues such as 1) student accountability. There are schools with policies that students cannot get a zero for cheating. There are schools with policies that the lowest grade a student can get is 59%. There are schools that will let a student pass the class when they only show up for class once a week (miss 4 out of 5 days of class). 2) Parent expectations. Many parents will ignore the teachers comments. Phone calls to parents about student's behavior issues are ignored. Parents do not log onto the schoool's website to see their student's grades. Parents don't want to be inconvenienced with their child's behavior. 3) Government involvment. Teachers are in the trenches and are totally ignored when it comes to educational policy.

So when people say that unions is the major cause of the educational problems, remember there are lots of core issues that have nothing to do with unions.