From your article:
There are still many skilled and inspiring teachers, make no doubt about that. But the system is stacked against them.
George, with all due respect, people who continue to put all blame on public school teachers are just as much a part of the problem.
I'm not saying there aren't bad teachers out there, and in some areas the unions certainly bear their share of the blame. BUT!
Teachers end up following policies sent down by the federal government, or by elected school boards, or by administrators hired by those elected school boards. And then there are there court cases filed by parents who don't think their baby should have failed for plagiarizing a paper or been suspended for not following the school rules.
You also have the court cases that say the schools are responsible for "educating" children who are profoundly handicapped and would have either been in residential facilities or never left home in the past. There are also those students with "behavior disorders" who have to be tolerated because a behavior disorder is a disability.
Going back to the school boards, many school board members have never been in a classroom, but they think they know everything about how one should be run. (I did too, for that matter, before I actually started teaching...I found out I was wrong about some things.)
Many of the administrators weren't real good in the classroom. Some were downright bad, but now they are the ones who tell the teachers working for them how to teach.
In many states, it's illegal for teachers to go on strike, and when they do so, most parents feel the teachers are being selfish. Some parents don't worry about their children learning anything, they just want that taxpayer-funded babysitting service functional so that the smaller children aren't home alone and the larger ones aren't "on the street".
Yes, there are bad teachers out there. Yes, the unions have some blame. No, the teachers aren't solely to blame, and they can't fix the system alone.
They do make a nice scapegoat, though.