The problem is less the career teachers who paid into it the whole time, and more the fact that unions basically got it till teachers could teach for an absurdly short time and still collect pensions. If you teach for 40 years, sure, get a pension, but the problem is people were teaching for 10, then going elsewhere, and still collecting pensions when the time rolled around.
But thats irrelevant, pensions are disappearing fast in favor of 401ks and things. Not sure how contribution matching works though like it does in the private sector.
Trust me, I agree unions have massive flaws, I just think that its disingenuous to pretend that things like what happened in Wisconsin were to "create competition among teachers". That was the last thing on the Koch brothers minds. We do need competition, and we need this country to take the teaching profession more seriously, unfortunately we go about it in the worst ways.
Its a vicious cycle of low pay and benefits (comparatively speaking) attracting less qualified people, who then are seen as inadequate, and are poorly paid.
We need to attract brighter minds to teaching both by compensating them for excellent work, and by having more rigorous teacher education programs in college.
And finally, we need to develop a system for rating teachers that somehow eliminates the poor ones, but doesn't result in a teachers entire career resting on standardized tests that a) dont show actual knowledge or intelligence, and b) students dont take seriously since they know they are unimportant.