As a former journalist-turned-educator, I was bemused by the spin USA Today decided to take on the Education Sector's recent report of its nationwide teacher survey. Although the survey and the report cover many important topics, the point the editors chose to highlight was "Teachers Agree: Bad Teachers With Tenure Tough to Fire."

From the headline, you'd think teacher frustration with tenure was the major finding of the survey.

Not.

True, 55% of the 1,010 teachers surveyed agreed that it is difficult and time-consuming to remove teachers who should not be in the classroom. But how did that rate the headline over some of the reports other findings, such as: "Almost eight in ten teachers (78 percent) agree that 'Without a union teachers would be vulnerable to school politics or administrators who abuse their power' '(p.8). Even here in the open-shop South, 65% of the interviewees concurred with the need for union protection. Many Southern teachers voluntarily join one of the major teacher unions, even in places where collective bargaining and striking is illegal, just to get the malpractice insurance and the legal representation.

Interesting to note, the major reason cited by the teachers for this need of union protection is one of the same reasons they identified for keeping bad teachers in schools: the inefficient, ineffective teacher evaluation system.

The authors themselves note that the nation's 3.2 million teachers have wide-ranging views that can't be comprehensively represented in one survey. Still, the report, which deserves a thoughtful read and better coverage, is a helpful step in bringing the views of teachers into the public thinking on teacher quality and school reform.