Con Teaching Unions

So, I've been preparing to be a teacher and I'm realizing that there is so much more to being a teacher than inspiring the future of the world. There is a curriculum to follow, standards to address, unions to deal with, and on and on and on.

I've decided I'm against Teaching Unions. They served a purpose in the past, and now they just make it easy for teachers to remain adequate and underpaid. See, one thing they've done is keep tenure in place and they have also standerdized payment scales.

Tenure- Tenure is a stupid thing. Why should having a job ever be a good enough reason to keep your job? This is another thing of the past, it kept professors/teachers safe when they published things that went against the grain in publishing papers. This seems to only apply to University professors, so why make it applicable to public school teachers?

Pay Scale- The way this works is that when you start teaching you make a certain wage that changes from district to district. Every year you work you get a tiny raise. If you change schools/districts/states and get a new job up until year seven, you can transfer your years worked and start at the same or close to the same status as where you left. However, if you've worked 14 years at one school and move to another, you can only transfer seven years of work. (Seven years is the maximum, this is something that has been agreed upon by the unions.) Then, you go back down the pay scale and have to start at year seven working your way up year by year again. Why does this suck? It prevents schools from paying great teachers more than crappy teachers. The pay scale is set (and agreed upon by the union) and as long as you've got tenure you're going to get paid the same no matter if you're a good teacher or not. It prevents teachers from changing schools after seven years. Maybe this isn't a bad thing, but then schools aren't scouting other good teachers to steal them away. Maybe this sounds like another good things. But then the schools aren't going out of their way to keep their teachers. In fact they don't generally do anything except the mandatory tiny raise each year.

Now, I personally don't have a problem with the wage teachers make. (Most teachers hate hearing what I'm about to say) But summers off, all major holidays, weekends, plus like 20 sick/personal days? Sign me up. However, do I think that money matters more to people with a family to support? Does money matter more to some people, for any reason? Would it be a better world if being and staying a teacher were harder and teachers got paid for being great teachers? (And less for being crappy teachers?) Yes, I do. And I think the best way to get there is to get rid of the union.

Of course, the second way to get there would for people to stop WANTING to be teachers. And as soon as there was a significant dip in prospective teachers, schools would get on the ball offering signing bonuses and better pay. That, I don't think is going to happen. Because people don't become teachers for the money. They do it because they have either failed at what they really want to do, or they like teaching.