Our education system is not overrun with bad teachers.  We do not have a bad teacher crisis.  Our problems stem from the fact that we are still running an industrial age education system, but we are no longer in the industrial age.  The rest of the world, that is far surpassing us, has geared their education to the technical age.  They understand a need for highly educated scientist and engineers.  We produce mostly high school drop outs, service sector folks, and all the money is made in the financial markets. 

This teacher bashing is just another way for the rich and powerful to keep the focus off of them.  Our failures in society stem from the inability of our supposed "leaders" to do any actual leading.  We stopped electing people with intelligence, compassion, broad worldviews, and a forward thinking philosophy.  Instead we have a bunch of greedy self important worthless figureheads, who couldn't solve a problem if their life depended on it. 

The progressives have lost their hope, and have stopped voting.  After the Democrats sold out to the very same corporate interest as the Republicans, there stopped being any real change.  Now we just have two parties that are essentially the same.  So all of our crises remain in crisis, and they continue to try and keep us fighting amongst each other.

The reason are country is in shambles, and a great deal many of us are struggling even when we have jobs has nothing absolutley nothing to do with teachers unions.  The top education system in the western world is 100% unionized.  Stop blaming the teachers and look to where the real culprits are.  All the people, who still have tons of money, even though we had a supposed financial crisis.   They are cutting jobs and cutting essential programs, yet corporations and Wall Street are doing great. 

Before the 1980s, working and middle class Americans were well compensated for their work, and they had pretty decent benefits.  The country was actually doing quite well.  Then over the course of these last three decades, things began to change.  The middle class began to shrink, and poverty began to rise.  Good paying jobs began to disappear to be replaced with minimum wage jobs.  The countries wealth began to concentrate back at the top similar to the pre-depression era known as the Guilded Age.  We began to see quite the dehumanization of the poor, and now teachers are being demonized. 

Divide and conquer is the tact of oppressors.  It would do us all some good if everyone would just read up on their history, and not the version of history that comes from people with an agenda.  Like conservatives and libertarian "historians", who completely brush over just how crappy things were before FDR, and just how great they were for the people.  That is what this is all about.  It is about the people.  Those of us who make the country run.  The ones who fight the wars, police the streets, put out the fires, teach the kids, make the sales, build the products, cook the food, grow the food, stock the store shelves, and all the other tasks required to keep the economy running so that others can enjoy the profits.  

We need to be looking at the bigger picture, and paying attention to the rampant corruption across the country.  Politicians, judges, and regulatory agents are all being bought and paid for by the wealthy elite.  When that happens there is no real freedom for us, and no real democracy.  That is the way the county operated all the way up until around the time of the New Deal.  That is when the government really started protecting the people.  When the politicians began undoing the framework of our economic security, that is when it all began to fall apart. 

Sometimes the wealthy and powerful get greedy, and they attempt of control the masses.  This is one of those times, and we need to stop falling for it.  We need to band together.  The financial regulations, that stabilized the economy and prevented the devastating boom and bust cycles, need to be returned.  We need jobs with livable wages, and we need a competitive education system.  Most importantly, we need to kick corporate interest out of politics, and off of regulatory commissions. 
What we do not need is more privatization and deregulation.  If we continue down this path, things will only get worse, as they have been for the last three decades.