>>>Teachers unions and tenure have produced a whole crop of bad teachers, and those bad teachers can't be fired, so they have to go somewhere.
>>
>>Did teacher's unions create these conditions unilaterally?
>>As I recall, most contracts require the agreement of more than one party.
>
>Not unilaterally of course.
>The unions negotiate in effect with the same politicians the unions support.

As Bill said, not here. Where I live in suburban Philly, the unions negotiate with a locally elected school board, which has taxing authority. In Philly, the largest district in the state, the school board used to be appointed by the mayor. Currently, after a state takeover, it's appointed partly by the governor and partly by the mayor. Part of Philly's problem has always been that the school board doesn't have taxing authority and has to go begging for the money to run the schools.

In my community (where I've lived for 37 years), I have never seen the teachers union take a position on school board candidates. For that matter, for many years, the president of the local teachers union was a neighbor whose kids were in school with my kids.

Tamar