School is as much about learning to pledge allegiance, line up, and respond to Pavlovian bells as it is about education. Teachers work in a context that is usually completely antithetical to the creativity and innovation you talk so much about. Insofar as you’re interested in public schools as something more than a factory that produces semi-skilled workers for businesses, you should focus on reforms more fundamental than busting teachers’ unions.
Great essay about education reform here in the State of Washington.
http://www.ufws.org/2012/02/27/who-breaks-a-butterfly-upon-a-wheel/
