Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
because the lack of autonomy coupled with the apparent stupidity of those making curriculum decisions does nothing but chew up the good ones and spit them out.

Indeed.

And so, we have a broken system in which no good teacher would want to remain, no sensible person would enter the profession to begin with, yet the solution is to fire the bad ones.

This leaves us with mediocre teachers, working within a system, which, thanks to NCLB and the testing culture it has produced, incentivizes mediocrity.