The fundamental issue I see with the conclusions&#x2F;recommendations is that the primary blocker preventing raising teacher salaries isn&#x27;t the union. From my own time as a grade school teacher and the friends I still have in the profession, I can comfortably say that there are very few teachers who wouldn&#x27;t cheerfully toss out the entire tenure and pension systems (and honestly, probably the whole union) if they were offered a pay scale comparable to that of coders in their area. The unions aren&#x27;t powerful because teachers are ideologically attached to unions, they&#x27;re powerful because teachers have been screwed over and over again and unions are literally the only protection they have. The unions took lower and lower salaries over the years in exchange for pensions and tenure; now everyone still wants to pay poverty wages <i>and</i> they want to strip away the other benefits.<p>Teachers know who&#x27;s good and who sucks, and for the most part, they hate the bad ones as much or more than anyone else. But the actual solution (a flat trade of salary in exchange for giving up their protections) will never happen, because too many people would rather nickel and dime the education system and then whine about why the ranks of a job that requires a college degree and pays below minimum wage aren&#x27;t full of the best and brightest.