In sports, it's the quality of athlete teams can put on the field. In education, it's the quality of teacher schools put in the classroom. Here, too, we can learn a lesson from professional sports. Unions that protect the rights of athletes can and do coexist with free agency. Contracts that provide minimum salaries and maximum protection can and are negotiated by players' unions without separating compensation from performance.
History provides another lesson.
Education is perhaps the only profession, absent those in the former Communist world, that has tried to succeed while totally delinking reward from performance. The result is a system that undermines the work ethic and destroys productivity. Only the altruism of the best teachers prevents the public school system from collapsing as the Communist world ultimately did. If the public school system is to survive, new forms, not reforms, are required. It is highly unlikely that the salaries of individual teachers would ever reach the heights of America's sports heroes without a sea change in the country's value system.