You have those who simply blame unions. If that were the problem, then children schooled in non-union areas would be performing better than kids in unionized districts. But they're not. Others will rail against the salaries teachers make (and the "average" salary is not remotely what starting teachers make). But salary itself is not the issue in the Chicago teachers' strike.

Sit down and make a list of the half-dozen people who have inspired you in your life, encouraged you when it seemed no one else was. Chances are, at least one of those names belongs to a teacher. Yes, they need to be held to reasonable standards of accountability. But they also deserve our respect.

I do disagree with part of the article.  We are all compensated on things that we have absolutely no control over.  For the most part, we are all interconnected at work and no one has the luxury of not working with people who aren't as enthusiastic or capable.  There are also forces that may have nothing to do with any of that, like a huge recession.  Part of teachers compensation has to be be tied to test scores.  These are educators, they can figure out how to remove kids that don't show up or other things in the calculation to make it more indicative of their performance.  But it should not be the basis of their compensation, just another part of it.

To me, teachers should be paid better than private industry people, they are teaching the future of America.  And these attacks, only make the kids in college think twice about getting into a profession in which the republicans have decided is overpaid and under worked, when in most cases the opposite is true.