as usual, your ignorance on topics shows. First off, NCLB didn't make teachers teach, instead it made teachers teach to a test, without funding for training in new curriculum. It put paperwork requirements on stuff and made education an even bigger bureaucracy than it was before. While I'll agree that unions can be very shady and that it gave more ways to get rid of sh------- teachers, I don't think that the Democrats are really interested protecting sh------- teacher number 27 in east bum!@#$ kansas.
In addition teachers are raking in superfluous amounts of cash as you believe. Quite honestly for the degrees required for education, teachers are generally paid below average. Even in NYS, the city of Buffalo starts teachers at 30 grand/year.
6.5 hours a day? you have to be joking. On any given day, I have to be in work by 8 and the earliest i can leave is 3:30. However, this does not include tutoring that I provide, times when I have to stay after or come in early for meetings. In addition, there isn't enough time in the workday to always get stuff done, so teachers tend to bring a ton of work home to do. On average for me, I generally pull 9-10 hours/ day at the school and another 1-2 at home. Even during our off-time, teachers have to go through training sessions any whatever else.
There are a ton of reasons why there is a shortage of good teachers at the moment: The pay is not stellar. the stress is enormous, especially when having to call parents or dealing with kids that can be sh-- heads. Neverending work, which sucks away your personal life.
There are two reasons that every teacher does their job: They love working with the majority of the kids and they want to help the kids succeed.
But yeah, in VA's diluted world, we are all worthless sacks of crap that sleep on the job, refuse to do our jobs, and bring in 6-figured salaries