Despite popular impressions and dinner-table gossip, the problems of our schools, and above all of "school reform," are not the result of unions. I speak in part from personal experience over the past thirty-five years in New York City and Boston. The last big project I was involved with in New York, which required real courage on the part of all the major institutional powers, came to a screeching halt because everyone backed down except the teacher's union. We had asked for a "free zone"-constituting no more than 5 percent of New York's student population as an experiment in non-regulation (or at least vastly decreased regulation). The state, the city, and the Board of Education ended up backing away, but at no point did the United Federation of Teachers. Perhaps they would have if and when we really began to operate (except on matters of wages and working conditions) outside of the union contract. They weren't always enthusiastic supporters; they were skeptical from first to last and...

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