How do you feel about the idea of not having a union?

My wife is a teacher, and her side of the family is full of teachers, so I hear about the woes of teacherdom all the time.... And honestly, coming from a strictly business background, with a family full of businessmen/executives, it is my understanding that it is strictly because of the union - or more specifically, the tenure - that education is having a lot of the problems we are seeing today.

Why in the world would it ever be a good idea to offer someone a position that they could never lose? How do the students benefit? I even experienced this in college - at a school that hired PhD's strictly on their ability to educate engineering students - when a professor of mine received tenure the summer between my freshman statics class spring quarter and my sophomore mechanics of materials class fall quarter. It was like night and day; he visibly, clearly cared less once he became tenured.

I believe if schools incentivized awesomeness like in the private sector, the cream would rise to the top. I get head hunters calling me weekly trying to steal me away to go work somewhere else - can you imagine if good teachers were actually incentivized over the course of their whole career, rather than just coasting out once receiving tenure? Can you imagine being a teacher and having head hunters knocking down your doors? That sure would take care of the compensation issue.

And I swear to god, if I hear the argument "but it isn't my fault if my kids suck, I shouldn't be punished for having dumb/misbehaving/etc kids," I am going to snap. There are an infinite amount of soft-skill careers out there where people excel through their ability to influence others that they have very little direct control over. Any given person in a middle management position, sales forces across the country, etc. Maybe instead of being a teacher because you like kids, maybe you should only be a teacher if you have the charisma to captivate and influence others.