...[A]ccording to a study Matthew Chingos and I just completed, teachers get better in the first few years of teaching, and then their performance slips in later years...

I strongly encourage you to read Richard Kahlenberg‘s brilliant 2007 biography of Albert Shanker, Tough Liberal...What struck me most about the book was the status of the teaching profession before Shanker and his colleagues won the right to collectively bargain in 1960...

Teachers in non-collective bargaining districts actually earn more than their union-protected peers–$64,500 on average versus $57,500...

Federal workers have the statutory right to bargain collectively, but that right does not include salaries, benefits or any other item that directly affects government expenditure...