Very well put. Teaching needs to pay much, much more and bad teachers need to be fired.

The problem is that while there are lots of really, really good teachers out there there are a lot more really, really bad teachers out there. I just watched a piece a few months ago about some people here in Florida who had just received their teaching certificates and they sounded like they were mildly retarded. If you can’t speak using proper grammar and pronunciation how are you supposed to be a good teacher?

I suppose my view is biased as well because the one teacher I know personally is dumb as a rock. She’s a very sweet, caring woman but dumb as a sack of hammers. She should not be teaching our children but she’s actually one of the smarter teachers at her school.

Which brings to mind the question, why are teachers so adamant about not wanting to be graded on their own performance? How can someone who’s whole job is grading people not want to be graded? This may be a typical misreporting by the press but that’s how I understand the issue.

And a final thought, how many teachers could we have hired with all the billions of dollars we’ve wasted in Iraq?

If you pay beans to average footballers, what do you get? Wind?