It's an interesting matter of perspective. I've been on the teacher's union side of things for a long time and our main complaint has been how the school board

It's an interesting matter of perspective. I've been on the teacher's union side of things for a long time and our main complaint has been how the school board is change adverse and is the greatest impediment to fixing the schools. For instance, back in the eighties, a local district did implement a performance based system for teachers. High performing teachers were rewarded with salary bonuses, while poor performing teachers did not even get raises to match inflation. Then, after a couple of years, the school fired all of the high performing teachers as a cost cutting measure. The incompetent teachers, whose salaries were much lower, were kept on and promoted to fill the departmental roles previously filled by the competent. As much as you hate lazy, incompetent teachers, we hate them even more. After they waste a year teaching the students nothing and handing out the As like candy, we're the ones stuck teaching all their material on top of our own curriculum to get the students up to speed. We want these idiots to get fired. Our problem is that the school board never fires them. They give As to all the rich kids, Cs to all the fat kids, and Bs to everyone else. This makes the parents happy, so the idiots keep their jobs year after year. When the competent teachers then grade the students on the little they've actually learned, they're the first on the chopping block. This is similar to the aversion to non-certified teachers. I knew a brilliant teacher who taught French for twenty years. During the summer, she'd do consulting work for the french consulate. You couldn't ask for a better French teacher. Unfortunately, this isn't a story about the quality of her French. Instead, this is a story about lowering qualification standards. One year, the state lowered the certification requirements for foreign language education. Initially, this seemed like a great plan. Until the day came that this incredible French teacher was told that she would now be teaching Spanish. The new, lower licensing requirements qualified her as a Spanish teacher, despite her not having even spoken the language in twenty years. Due to her professional pride and dedication, she spent her own money on a three month summer immersion plan to gain some proficiency, but she still wasn't at the level of competence required by her professional pride and she resigned at the end of the year. The teacher who replaced her was just as (un)qualified to teach Spanish, but didn't have the professional pride and is still teaching. While changing the certification requirements has the potential to bring in some brilliant teachers from industry backgrounds, its mostly used to hire a whole new class of idiot. Granted, I'm not naive enough to believe that it's this way at every district. I've heard the horror stories of teacher union defending complete monsters. I don't want that to happen any more than you do. However, reading a proposal from the school board is like reading an e-mail from a Nigerian prince: no matter how great the plan seems, you know that it's all part of a larger scheme to screw you over.