Quote Originally Posted by Goofball
Hmmm. Unions. Tough call.

There are two unions that I sympathize with where I live: the nurses and the teachers. I sympathize with them mainly because I believe that the people who choose those two professions do so largely because they want to help and give back to society, even though it will never make them rich. For that reason, I think they would get completely walked on by the government if they didn't have a union to be their mouthpiece.

OTOH, I think most other unions are nothing more than a refuge and shield for the untalented, unmotivated, or uneducated to try to demand more money than their services are actually worth, thereby artificially inflating prices for the rest of us.

Good first post, CR.
I can't speak for the country as a whole, but where I come from, most teachers with more than a few years experience make well above the median income and most get 3 months off out of the year too- not a bad deal in my book. I'm not trying to say that they don't work hard or that there aren't good teachers- there are. But there are also incompetent and just plain bad one's too that are more often than not sheltered and protected by unions. Unions also prevent people who excel from getting ahead- their payscales are all carefully negotiated by seniority. You can be a terrible teacher yet make more than a brilliant one by virtue of the fact that you've been at it longer- that's not right.

The NYC schools apparently have a good union- let's see what it takes for the district to fire an incompetent teacher: clicky
They have an entire office building to warehouse bad teachers in. Some have had inappropriate relationships with students- but it's easier to keep them out of the classroom and on the public payroll than it is to dismiss them.

On unions in general, they are useful for workers when there are many workers vying for few(especially low-skill) jobs. In those situations employers can easily fire and replace employees who aren't satisfied with their work/pay. However, the US currently has a fairly tight labor market- companies are willing to pay to get good employees.

Taking this back to the schools... In a situation like this, good teachers should be paid good money. School boards are elected and therefore should be motivated to get results. If they won't pay for quality teachers, the quality of education would suffer accordingly. However, in the situation imposed by the unions good teachers are paid the same as the worst teachers.