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If you have not taught in urban schools, you have nothing to say to me. Maybe in YOUR fairyland district administrators can't change teachers' grades, but my experience is that they don't hesitate to go right behind teachers' backs, the first knowledge that they did so when the teacher hands out the report cards and sees the changes. Around here, teachers have to justify in writing any failing grades, so there is very little, if any, using grades punitively. It's MUCH more common to see administrators use teacher observations punitively.

Your comment about "it must be nice going to work every day not having to worry about competition or producing results" is a semi truck load of baloney. Teachers are constantly being harassed for their grade stats and whether their lessons are in line with the teaching methodology currently in vogue. There is currently no room for teachers who want to be mavericks and teach the way they think they should teach, to "make a difference". Such teachers have a special name: unemployed. Your whole discussion is about some alternate universe, not in line with current Earth reality in large cities.

Maybe you missed the part of my post that addressed suburban vs. inner city schools. To think the teacher's unions isn't complicit in the failed state of urban public schools requires the total suspension of disbelief.

Teachers don't have to worry about competition and they have little worry about losing their jobs -- unless you also also deny the reality of rubber rooms. Yeah, they have to put up with a lot of crap from their supervisors. So what? Trying to compare what teachers have to deal with (big city, suburbs or rural) to what the private sector has to deal with every day of the week, and weekends, is comical.

My universe is much more common than yours so thank you for marginalizing what a large percentage of parents/taxpayers have to deal with. Your reality is the only reality so please don't let any other circumstances influence your world view in any way.

Perhaps teachers who don't like the system should find more meaningful employment in the private sector? One of the best lines ever came from he first Ghostbusters movie when the professors were about to be fired...."Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities; we didn't have to produce anything. You've never been out of college. I've worked in the private sector. [states fearfully] They expect results."

If you truly have any interest in current Earth realities" that quote provides it.