Comment by marcuskane2

> but is afraid to anger the union, so anything short of actual violence by a teacher against a student won’t have any consequences

Everyone should watch the fantastic documentary "Waiting for Superman" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1566648/) that highlighted just how problematic the teacher's unions have become and how much of an impediment to education they are.

Even in cases of gross negligence (showing up to school drunk, completely failing to teach, etc) bad teachers just get bounced to another school. Teachers who physically assault or sexually abuse a student might remain on the payroll for years while the bureaucracy slowly reviews their case.

The unions have also prevented any form of incentivizing teachers to perform well or rewarding good teachers. In fact, the union leaders prevented the teachers from even voting on changes (that the majority of teachers wanted) that would have allowed good teachers to be rewarded and bad teachers to be removed from the classroom.

There are a lot of problems with education in America, but the teachers unions have to be right at the very top of the list.