The reason tempers are flaring about teachers, schools, and budgets is that there are some genuine underlying problems that admit of no easy solutions.

There are, to be sure, real money problems. We have inherited a system built for a world of expansion — more kids, more tax revenue, more content, more mandates, and, recently, more testing. With all the body of law, we are caught in a system that has lost sight of the primary goal which is to educate our communities' (and our nation's) children and teenagers.

Make no mistake. We are witnessing a massive government failure that has been brewing for many years and is now erupting in, so far, isolated systemic failures. Angry people look for someone to blame. This is the new American way. Blame Bush, blame Obama, blame the overpaid CEOs and bonuses, blame the predatory lenders. Problem with the budget? Blame the teachers.

No teacher is to blame. Each person has the right to act in his or her own self interest and to ask for — even exorbitant — wages and benefits along with cushy hours and working conditions. It is the school boards and the state legislatures, though, that have voted to implement those demands.

The situation is not unlike the Detroit automobile problem. Unions and automakers believed that the expansion would last long enough to cover their mutual management mistakes, and so promised more than could be sustained. We see the same problem in the collapse of the housing bubble. As long as prices kept rising, it didn't matter if the mortgage was collectable — the underlying property would yield a profit for both the under-funded owner and the irresponsible banker. And it's the same problem as with Social Security, where the funding of ever-increasing benefits was predicated on an ever-expanding work force. Knowing this, government did the same thing with health care to produce an unfunded Medicare and Medicaid system and a fictionally funded ObamaCare system.

It's not that cars and well-paid workers aren't good. They are. As is home-ownership, Social Security and Medical Care. But even the best plans, conceived by caring people, in Robert Burns' words, "Gang aft agley." That is, things go wrong.

But let's consider the teachers. The system exists, not to provide (very good) jobs in the community, but rather to educate the children. Individually, teachers perform this education function, almost universally, to the best of their ability. Collectively, teachers, as represented by their unions and contracts, stand against the interest of both the employing community/state and their clients. This is not evil but only appears so due to a misunderstanding of the nature of unions. They exist to provide value for their members and try (much as the Congress and CEOs do) to convince the public that what they are asking for, for themselves, is really for the children and public good. We must not buy the lie that they are "serving the students" when they are simply servicing them, while serving themselves.

By many standards, even without the current economic crises, teachers are overpaid. As long as the money appeared by magic we were happy about this situation or didn't even notice it. But now that districts, states, and even the federal taxing, borrowing (and printing) limits are being reached, it's time re-evaluate.

By what measure are teachers overpaid? Teachers are paid more than the market wage. Were all the teachers in a district to resign, they could be replaced at much lower wages by equally qualified employees. This is not true for other union jobs, such as auto workers, since most of those jobs have a negotiated wage that is the same for new or old workers. Teachers have salary schedules that award significantly more pay for time-on-the job. (It doesn't have to be that way. A flat salary, perhaps divided into a few categories such as "probationary," "tenured," and "master" might better reflect value.) We live in a world where "salary steps" is only a payment scheme, not one in which the additional experience is "worth" so much additional pay. This scheme neither rewards teacher excellence nor encourages improvement. There is no built-in link between the quality of the teacher's contribution and the compensation level. It is only presumed that age and time-on-the-job make for better educators. That may be so for some, even for many, but it is aptly said that in changing times, experience is your worst enemy.

And tenure. Tenure was meant to protect against whimsical and political firings, to defend the concept of academic freedom. It was not meant to provide lifetime employment for the less competent. And it was never meant to be the cornerstone of the economics of schools. Tenure, as it first appeared in universities, was usually awarded after 7 years of outstanding performance. Now, in the public schools, it is more typically awarded after 3 years of doing nothing wrong.

Underlying these "salary steps," which amount to automatic salary increases, we have salary schedules that raise the whole pay scale, depending on district, every year or every few years, and usually with each new contract. Beyond this, there are the education level add-ons; these are different columns in the salary schedule which provide pay increases for graduate credits earned. These vary widely from district to district but are often available for 15 or 30 credits earned and typically pay about $5000 per year for 30 credits for the duration of employment and usually, as pensions are salary-dependent, into retirement, for life.

The market, too, is an artificial one. In our zeal to allow only the best and "properly trained" individuals to teach we've instituted a degree and licensing system that excludes many very well qualified individuals from participating in the public education process. The individuals range from brilliant and hopeful young graduates to older, especially retired, community professionals. Unless they have the right papers they're not allowed in the government schools. Charter schools take advantage of such talent, to the benefit of their students, but the teachers' unions almost universally oppose these schools precisely because they do allow undocumented, non-union hires.

Most people agree that it is the government's business to pay for education. This has traditionally and constitutionally been the province of the States and their localities. However, people do not agree that the states should be the exclusive providers of that education. Parochial schools, home schools and a wide range of private schools have shared in this delivery. Teachers unions oppose vouchers that would allow students to leave undesirable government schools with the government providing (typically much less than what the school spends on that pupil) in money that follows the student to the schools chosen by the parents. Unions oppose vouchers because alternatives are a direct threat to their power in the public schools. As to be expected, when such issues are placed before the voters (or in the case of Washington DC, the Congress) unions spend millions of dollars to offer many button-pushing arguments often having to do with church-state issues and "undercutting" the public system. It is not the unions' business to consider the morality of "keeping children in failing schools," but it is the teachers' business and it is ours.

In spite of all this we must not blame the teachers. Once upon a time they were in short supply, underpaid, and very much needed. Fast forward. There is an abundant supply. Those with jobs are overpaid. Benefits and pensions are unsustainable.

As to very much needed — well, yes and no. Schools and classrooms are outmoded delivery systems for a bygone era. There is no denying the socialization function of the school and its community. However, for content, technology and the Internet allow the delivery of packets of information — knowledge if you will — on a personalized individual basis. The classroom, many students presumed to be at the same pace in the same place, came into being before paperback books were invented. Textbooks, handed down year-to-year were one of the few sources of learning content. The organization which we evolved was for the benefit of the teaching side of education — not the learning side. We could not afford the tutoring system of the wealthy — many teachers for one or a few children, and a curriculum geared to the needs, abilities and shortcomings of each unique child. But now, with a little cleverness, we can.

The things which only schools can provide, such as gymnasiums, auditoriums and equipment-intensive environments, are the systems strengths. The classrooms less so.

Bob Prener is Professor of Mathematics, emeritus, at Long Island University. He has spent the last 20 years of his employment teaching and directing graduate programs in Elementary and Secondary Education in Rockland, Westchester and the mid-Hudson. He bears the guilt that the degrees and credits earned in his many courses represent a burden of the order of $100 million to the taxpayers of northern New Jersey and Rockland County. He hopes that his teacher-students have been prepared and motivated to make themselves worth the money.