I can agree with that. Another thing that's always been strange to me is that teachers want to be thought of as professionals, yet paid on a union scale.
IMO, paying for (and promoting by) only seniority, whether in schools, factories, whereever, leads to mediocrity and less productivity.
Absolutly correct. I worked in two fields, aerosapce, as an electrical engineer and teaching, as a math teacher and coach. I took a pay cut to teach, and after a period of declining enrollment was laid off and went back to my old aerospace job. Got a pay raise of 20% to go back. But you know what? I met many engineers who envied me my time at teaching. If they could have received a comparable salary, they too would go into teaching. (And the schools/kids would be the winners.)
PS, when my aerospace company found out I could teach, they made it possible for me to break from my line job from time to time to teach our engineering style to the new engineers in the company. I also lead many week long seminars teaching management how to solve problems and make decisions. I found that in industry, teachers are paid very well, and the teachers who can do it, should break from the union. The first step is to change laws to bring "right to work rules" to those states that are mired in union backwaters.