In an editorial appearing in today's Sacramento Bee, the teacher's union is singled out for blame in the state's effort to secure funds to be distributed by the Obama administration.

Specifically, the reluctance of the union to allow data collection which would tie teacher and student achievement together. I would assume that if the success or failure of a particular student could be traced to an individual teacher; there could be some embarassing consequences. When you couple this to the fact that most teachers have tenure; which makes bad teachers almost impossible to fire; you get an interesting paradox.

If California is ever to have solid tools to increase student success, then there must be some way to find out if there are incompetent teachers who need to be dealt with. With the power of today's computers it would seem that it would be simple to tie each student to every teacher they have ever been exposed to. Which is something that would create problems for the entrenched teachers union. Add to this, the fact that the unions are tied hand and foot to the democrat power machine in Sacramento; don't expect much to change.

Even if it means the state and the students lose valuable federal tax dollars. Sooner or later this situation will boil over. I will watch with great interest.