Without public education, many children would never hear the word evolution. I've worked in high schools. The unions aren't the problem. Sometimes teachers are the problem, but in my experience, the worst problems besides unmotivated students (this is a huge problem) is the nonsense imposed from above--e.g., let's make everyone learn how to take these particular tests, then make them a bigger deal than any other thing in the school year, which works until kids get older and start intentionally blowing the tests because they don't matter to them; classes filled with kids who may not have support at home, and even if they do, may be unmotivated (one of my sons wasn't motivated until his last year of high school; by then it was hard to get into college--his lack of motivation was *his* choice, not the school's fault nor mine); trust in every new thing that comes down the pike, whether it's learning styles (now debunked) or flipped learning (yeah, maybe that would work--Gates thinks it would). I tutored a kid who was going to enter remedial math in 5th grade. He didn't know his math facts. I taught his family how to teach them to him, and last year, he earned an A in math. Unequal funding is apparently a problem in other states. At any rate, unless these people have spent a year or two in a classroom, I don't think their opinions count.

Sure the union is a significant contributor to the problem of the failure of our public school system. In Tampa FL, at a Middle School, where I taught, the union spent over $10,000 to save a 20-year teacher who pulled a gun on students to drive them out of his school garden. The incident occurred over the week-end (90s). Yet, another teacher of the same Middle School, an excellent teacher, with several degrees of content and of the how to teach content, was not supported by the union because the teacher was a teacher of one year in the union. The principal of the high school where the teacher was transferred, ordered a little old lady, a union member, to spy on this teacher during the year. She agreed. The principal, later that year, was discovered working the students' various clubs to buy him a car due at the end of the year, his retirement. The union did nothing about it. My point: this kind of union behavior goes on every day. All that we see in the media is an advertising program and fraudulent statistics by both principals and teachers, and unions. Solution: competition, charter schools, private schools, when a teacher is fired, then fire one administrator. Our public schools are no more than cess pools. Strong action is needed. I feel so sorry for those good people there who must stay in order to pay the mortgage, utilities - - - but, then again, these same good people stab in the back new teachers who come in and really try to teach. Parents: stop telling the teacher how to teach, what books to teach, and if you, parent, become angry, deal with it with your kid, 90% of the time it is your kid's problem. Ok, enough, I've seen it all and can go on for triple digit pages. Hundreds of teachers can relate this same set of facts.