It's not perfectly fine without evidence, it's just unsupported rambling about how things are going to hell, in direct contradiction of what little anecdotal evidence he has, in order to prop up an ideologically favored argument.

My point is not the bad teachers. They just serve as a litmus test. My point is that the incentives are wrong, and bad teachers react the most to that.

Good teachers care enough about the students to sacrifice their own livelihood for the good of the student. At least, to a degree. Sometimes that means buying school supplies from their own pocketbook, and other times that means extra time spent on students who have different needs than the rest of the class, above or below.

And I'm not calling all the rest of the teachers 'bad'. The ones that do their job to their best of their ability, but don't sacrifice, are not bad. They're largely being ignore here.

It's only the teachers that do the bare minimum and only think as far as making teaching easier for themselves... Those are the bad ones. And the incentives currently favor them.

That's why I said "in his opinion". You may disagree with him but there is nothing wrong with him saying he thinks that education was better in his day than what he sees now. He states his opinion, you say he is wrong and then demand he prove himself correct by presenting evidence that supports his ideologically favored argument even though you present nothing to support your ideologically favored argument.

And based on data I've seen for the past few years on the performance of our education system I would have to say he's more likely correct than you.

I didn't actually make a point about policy. I was just defending teachers.

He's saying that because of the incentives, most teachers will drift into becoming lazy SOBs who don't fundamentally care about education and will only work to the extent that they're whipped into doing it.

I'm saying that there's something else going on, in most cases. Professional pride, believing in education.