In at least one major school district, the beginning the year shuffle for matching the unfilled classrooms with the unwanted staffing is called the "Dance of the Lemons". Those that don't get an assignment are still clocking in every day at HQ & assigned useless tasks like creating lesson plans (that nobody will ever use).

Wouldn't that be great if violent cops were assigned to create Public Safety materials all day that went straight into the bin? They can't be fired so their job is to do something completely worthless until they quit.

Years ago, the police wronged me, and i raised a successful complaint. I got an apologetic phone call from an officer who, i got the impression, had the job of sitting in a police station making apologetic phone calls. He spent about forty seconds apologising, then went on an umprompted several-minute rant about how the police knew who all the criminals were, and if the government would just give them guns (this was in the UK), they could end crime tomorrow. I think it's simply connecting the dots to assume he was stuck on phone duty because he was a colossal liability to have walking around in public.

BLM protests showed the police to be quite useless in the UK.

Why can’t they be fired? AFAIK, tenure generally does not protect teachers who do grossly illegal acts, such as assaulting a student.

How do you know they've done it?

Do you have to leave them in front of kids teaching students until they're convicted?

What if that takes months? Or never actually happens? But the teacher has crossed the line inappropriately enough times that no parent wants their kid in the same room with him?

In the most positive light, a union might protect a genuinely good teacher being unfairly accused or targeted for political reasons from being put out of work. But sometimes following the processes for ensuring that can be so unreasonable to work through on a practical level that it's easier to just keep them employed but away from students until it gets resolved or they quit.

There's a famous PDF that gets shared when this comes up (although it's geared toward an incompetent teacher):

https://reason.com/wp-content/uploads/assets/db/126393089187...

US teacher salaries are abysmal. When education funding gets cut the school boards the unions successfully negotiate stronger employment protections (after all, if a job pays poorly you need to attract employees some other way, such as good PTO, benefits, or in this case: a job for life).

It’s also entirely possible that even without the unions, the school boards don’t want to get rid of bad teachers simply because they’re already, and chronically, understaffed.

US teacher salaries aren't nearly so bad as you're thinking. Median is around $60k, which compares favorably to the median household income of $59k - and teachers get better benefits, too.

Yes, it's not tech-level pay. But it's not exactly "abysmal" either.

Teacher salary is dependent on how wealthy the school district's tax constituents are, because education funding in the US comes from property taxes.

Given the amount of education, time and their own resources they're expected to put in to do their jobs, I wouldn't categorize them as "good", and would say generalizing their compensation as poor would be accurate given those points.

I’m not sure where that number comes from, but I know in my fairly high wealth state the maximum amount a teacher’s salary can be is about 45k. Benefits are about the average for that level of employment, nothing I’d call “better” than anything else. My ex is a teacher, and I make well over three times her salary. We both have Master’s degrees - that’s also required to be a teacher.

If police unions would do that to the officers who kill or beat prisoners, many people would be satisfied.

I would not be satisfied if my tax dollars paid the salary of police officers that killed and beat people, rubber room or otherwise.

I would be more satisfied with a rubber room than the scenario where they are paid to actively beat and kill people.