Washington, D.C. school superintendent Arlene Ackerman proposed a plan to give an 11 percent pay boost for entry-level teachers, to make their starting salaries $30,000 and presumably to improve the miserable quality of the city's schools. But the city's teachers union killed the proposal on the grounds that the raise was unfair to existing teachers, who started for less.

A similar plan to give new teachers a $5,000 signing bonus in Richmond, Virginia, was nixed because, as union president Robert Gray said, it "sends a signal that... inexperienced teachers are more valuable than [experienced] teachers."

And the United Educators of San Francisco filed a grievance with the school district because the Edison Charter Academy paid $2,800 to $3,600 more in annual salary than other public schools. Aside from the salary difference, the union was also disturbed that Edison's teachers worked 8 hours a day and 190 days a year, compared with 7 hours a day over 181 days a year as in other schools.

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