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The people who come to work deserve to be paid properly, and there's no excuse. I could understand someone making a small error, but sometimes people make systematic errors, and that's not right.

Due process policies such as tenure are put in place to protect good teachers from being fired without cause. They aren't there to protect 'bad' teachers.

Merit pay has failed repeatedly, and it's no surprise. When you base teacher pay on standardized test scores, you won't improve education; you just promote the high-stakes testing craze that's led parents, students and educators to shout 'Enough!' all across the country.

Though monetary compensation may never add up, teachers can rest assured that they are important.

The factory model of education is a gargantuan bureaucracy. Some kids are good fits - I wasn't. The system gives you bad grades and tells you you're stupid. You don't think, 'If this kid's not a good fit, it could be the system's fault.'

Misdirected focus on paperwork, on procedures, and on bureaucracy frustrates teachers and fails to give children the education they need.

The worst fault of the working classes is telling their children they're not going to succeed.

The failures that we have are sometimes expensive educations.