Obama booed by some NEA teachers

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

We must get rid of tenure and destroy the teachers' unions.

That is the solution, the rest is really useful.  Although I highly disagree that we should pay $150k+ to people who "work" 180 days a year in most cases.

You're making the same mistake a lot of people make, that the only time that should count as "work" for a teacher is the time spent teaching to the students.  Somehow, preparing lessons, grading students, and all the other ancillary tasks expected of a teacher takes all of 0 seconds, or is so much fun, that people shouldn't be expected to be paid for it.  However, I do agree that pay is not the primary concern, rather it is the schedule.  Ideally, the school year should be 200 days, not 180, and teachers should have only 50% of their on site time allocated to classroom teaching, with the rest used for prep work, grading, parent conferences, etc.  If I had my way, here's what an average student's 2008-9 school calendar would look like:

July 28: First day of first semester
September 1: Day off for Labor Day
November 4: Day off for Election Day
November 26-28: Three days off for Thanksgiving
December 19: Last day of first semester

January 5: First day of second semester
April 6-10: Spring Break / Snow Days
May 29: Last day of second semester

Note also the lack of teacher work days.  With adequate prep time allocated, they wouldn't be needed in the middle of a school semester.

If you wish to take other holidays off, the end of the second semester and the start of the first semester would need to be moved up, but in my opinion at the primary education level (K-6), those holidays are better used as teachable moments.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Ideally, the school year should be 200 days, not 180

Hell no.

Hell yes. A lot of teaching time gets wasted reteaching material forgotten over summer vacation.  A shorter summer vacation would reduce that forgetfulness.  180 days was originally a compromise between urban schools which had longer school years and rural schools which had shorter years.  Since young kids are not needed to help out on the farm any more, there really is no need to retain the shortened school year any more.  (I could see older farm kids including their farming chores as part of a vocational educational system.)  Most countries have longer academic school years than the United States.  At a bare minimum we should go for 190.  200 is what we should aim for.