Quite a dustup seems to have been precipitated by Terry Moe, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, when he penned, in the Wall Street Journal, the following passage: “If the teachers unions won’t voluntarily give up their power, then it has to be taken away from them – through new laws that, among other things, drastically limit (or prohibit) collective bargaining in public education, link teachers’ pay to their performance, make it easy to get rid of mediocre teachers, give administrators control over the assignment of teachers to schools and classrooms, and prohibit unions from spending a member’s dues on political activities unless that member gives explicit prior consent.”

The leadership of the American Federation of Teachers unleashed a blizzard of protesting e-mail to the Journal. Perhaps this reflects an excess of zeal by the new president of the AFT, Edward J. McElroy. It is understandable that Mr. McElroy wants to demonstrate “strong leadership” to his membership so early in his tenure. Mr. McElroy has big shoes to fill in those of the late Albert Shanker. While Shanker was an unyielding defender of the interests of his members, he was also a refreshing voice of reason on the necessity for educational reform.

Shanker understood that, ultimately, the professional respect that accrues to the teaching profession – and by extension the compensation teachers receive – is a reflection of the results teachers achieve in the classroom. Good results will only come from reform. The status quo of mediocre outcomes is not supportable. Mr. McElroy will need to cultivate not just the loyalty of the most vocal of his members, but the respect of the public at large, if he is to really succeed in raising the respect for his profession.

Mr. Moe respects the reasons that the teachers unions behave the way they do – they simply are supporting their self-interest. But this is not School System, Inc., a corporate entity that exists in a competitive environment. In private industry, union power is counterbalanced by the need to remain competitive, or indeed save a troubled company in a competitive business environment. This is a difficult lesson learned painfully in those instances in which overaggressive union demands drove jobs from our shores.

The lack of such a counterbalanced relationship is why there is a long history of opposition even within the American labor movement toward the idea of unions representing public employees. Critics of the idea would not be surprised by what has happened to the movement he once led. Today it is the employees in the public sector who dominate organized labor. In education the only counterbalance to union power is the interests of the children to be properly schooled and society at large to derive the benefits of an educated populace.

To complicate these matters, the only force capable of counterbalancing the powerful teachers unions is the government – the other signatory to every teacher contract. Government is, alas, run by politicians most sensitive to getting re-elected. The teachers unions have made an art of using their nigh limitless resources toward political ends. Democrats are the usual beneficiaries of this support, but even some Republicans find it hard to resist union political power.

There is a strategic way out of this which doesn’t involve limiting the power of the teachers to bargain collectively. To preserve the union’s bargaining power while counterbalancing both the unions and the politicians will empower parents (the closest thing schools have to customers), to exercise some choice in respect of where they send their children to school. The way to do this is through voucher programs, thus allowing those who truly have at heart the interests of the pupils to choose where to send their children.