Striking teachers show that cutting education to fix it is a neoliberal myth
For decades we have been told that the way to fix education is to fire people but red-shirted marchers across the country have shown the power of solidarity
What I like best about the wave of teachers’ strikes that have swept America these last few months is how they punch so brutally and so directly in the face of the number one neoliberal educational fantasy of the last decade: that all we need to do to fix public education is fire people.
Fire teachers, specifically. They need to learn fear and discipline. That’s what education “reformers” have told us for years. If only, the fantasy goes, we could slay the foot-dragging unions and the red-tape rules that keep mediocre teachers in their jobs, then things would be different. If only some nice “tech millionaires” would step in and help us fire people! If only we could get a thousand clones of Michelle Rhee, the former DC schools chancellor who fired so many people she even once fired someone on TV!
Now just look at what’s happened. We’ve seen enormous teacher protests in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona, with more on the way. Actions that look very much like strikes by people who, in some of these states, are legally forbidden to strike. It was the perfect opportunity for education “reformers” to fire people, and fire them en masse. It was the politicians’ chance to show us what a tough-minded boss could do.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/21/teacher-strikes-schools-neoliberal-fantasy-debunking
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Starting with DeVos. 
teachers were pink slipped every year, sometimes they were rescinded. Our benefits were cut and those of us who didn't get cut had no pay increase/COLA for over 5 years and this is in very expensive Southern CA. Once they offered a Golden Handshake in 2000 but that was it. The morale was so low that 30% of the experienced teachers retired when the normal retirement rate was 2%. When I left my retirement was severely less since it is based on your average pay of the past three years of work and I hadn't been teaching long enough to get any incentives. Experienced teachers were greatly missed and the situation has only gotten worse. I really wonder why anyone would become a teacher now. It certainly isn't for the pay or for respect as well as the current gun issues. The best advice I gave ROP student was "don't become a teacher". We all told them this over the years. I hope they listened. 
