Education and the New Economy

OK, so despite my usual fear of "weighing in" (I am a large man after all--OK extra large damn you), I feel that being that I am a teacher, I ought to say at least a few things about Obama's recent speech on education.
Let me first say that though I have my picadillo's about the stimulus package and some of the other things that have gone on since Barack took office, I have to say, that he is doing a fantastic job of setting the table, and no one (not even Rush Limbaugh--by the way, isn't it time someone got that guy, and by got I mean kill) can say that the guy's been lazy or isn't trying hard. That being said, the general populace ought to be warned that if they really want to fix education, they are going to have to pay for it, and anyone involved in education deserves to be skeptical about the prospects for real change.
The good news is that if we can somehow avoid getting involved in dumb, useless wars like Iraq and Vietnam, we could easily pay for a revolutionary school system like the one Obama talked about in his speech. The problem, as usual, is that our kneejerk, meathead population, their Republican sponsors, and their sponsors, better known as arms dealers, are going to fight any reduction in military spending moronic soundbyte by senseless pundit.
The other problems are more complex. For instance, as a teacher, I am all for merit pay, but how are we going to judge merit. If it is based primarily on student testing data, you can count me out. Students, even high school students, are highly irrational and unreliable--especially when there is no real penalty for not passing a standardized test.
I could probably sit here all night telling you about the potential problems that merit pay could bring, but here's how it could work:
1) Raise the stakes for teachers and students. If a teacher is unable to help students achieve measurable gains in learning on a consistent basis, they should be fired. If a student fails to achieve measurable gains in learning on a consistent basis, they should be either put in a blue-collar, trade program, or sent off to military or other state or federal service.
2) Along with student achievement, teachers ought to be judged on A) professionalism, B) education, C) methods, and D) subject knowledge. This can be determined by continuing administrative observations, student/staff/parent surveys, pursuit of an ongoing education, and periodic subject testing. To ensure that judgments are unbiased, auditors could conduct at least some of these assessments.
3) Teachers ought to then receive a rating on a scale, for instance, excellent teachers would receive an 'A' rating, above average a 'B' rating, and so on and so forth.
4) Schools would then compete to sign the best teachers, with poor, urban schools given more money to encourage the best teachers to work in the toughest situations.
5) Schools should run year round, with a 8 hour/4 day work week (our whole society should go to a 4 day work week--more on this later) and a month off in summer, with a week off in fall, spring, and two weeks off in winter. Teachers are expected to take ongoing educational classes with their extra time off.
Though I have not addressed everything here, I believe that these ideas would go a long way to fixing our educational system so that we can compete in the future. Cheers.