Their unions a HUGE aside for the moment, let me ask this: why are we continuing to allow school districts -- with their vastly different funding resources, curricula philosophies, underpaid or no-paid elected officials, and so forth -- rather than develop a system much like is provided in other government agencies? In other words, why are teachers employees of the individual, wide-ranging school districts, rather than say, of a state government? Why is there not better oversight, personnel assignment and so forth, so that this inequity cannot exist?
There is much that is broken, but that a child in District A is afforded a public financed education that is inferior to child in District B, well, is this fair? Is it acceptable to treat citizens inequitably?
The students, the taxpayers who fund the education system, the businesses that rely on its graduates for its labor resources, and our society itself, do we not deserve better than the status quo?
The short answer is "Local Control". It is assumed that those who live in a community will actually care more about the kids in their community than some bureaucrat in an office far, far away.
I have lived in communities in both extremes. There are some communities who demand the schools be given the best of everything, then there are some communities that see schools as a necessary evil.
However, in my very limited teaching experience (several years as a substitute teacher and one year of teaching full-time K-12), I've rarely seen a student fail who had parents that were interested in his education. In almost every case, when I had a student who was uninterested in getting an education (and who was unwilling to put in the effort to get an education), I found a parent who wasn't interested in their child getting an education.
I was raised in a farming community in West Texas. The schools were horrendous! As mentioned by a previous poster, we had several teachers who did not know the subject matter and we (the students) had to teach ourselves. The only reason I got a decent education is because of my mother.
Now, take a look at the statistics. The worst schools are frequently the best funded schools. DC pays over $11,000 per student per year. Yet, they are consistently ranked as the worst schools in the nation.
While looking for that statistic, I came across this article in which Kentucky's 20% increase in per-pupil spending is analyzed. The net result was that more money did not result in better schools. "In fact, for students evaluated using the federal National Assessment of Education Progress reading test, scores for Kentucky students declined."
My Mom and I were discussing this tonight. If we want our schools to improve, we need to get good teachers into the schools and, IMNSHO most importantly, give the parents an incentive to be certain their student behaves and works towards getting the best education he is capable of obtaining.
Again, IMNSHO, the first step is to eliminate compulsory education. If a parent wants his kid to go through life ignorant, then they should have that right. It's not "fair" to the kid, but neither is it fair for a bored kid to ruin the education of those who want to learn.
Second, expel the little brats who will not obey their instructor. If the parents want someone to look after their kids for eight or ten hours per day, put the onus on the parents to make their child behave. If the parent won't motivate their spawn, then dump the kid back on the parent.
Third, vouchers, and vouchers. That's two types of vouchers. A) Vouchers for parents to help send their child to whatever school they choose and B) vouchers for the taxpayer to send the tax money the state mandates they spend on education to any educational institution (public, private, primary, secondary, whatever). Do not lock any person (user or payer) into one school district just because of geography.
That's my 2¢.