A suprise mystery guest on the Ricochet podcast tells me the bitter truth. (It comes after the 55 minute mark.) … 6:55 P.M.

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Teachers’ unions = layoff by seniority. In average districts, that just means losing lots of good teachers, instead of losing the least effective teachers. But in big cities like New York, where there’s been an influx of young, idealistic Teach for America types, it’s a tragedy. The best get laid off while mediocre ed school graduates from the 70s teach your children. … What if you tried to run a baseball team and had to lay off by seniority as opposed to performance? … P.S.: It’s not as if school districts have to choose between layoffs-entirely-by-seniority and layoffs-entirely-by-merit. It would be easy to devise a system in which everyone who was an “OK” teacher got laid off by seniority, but the worst 10% got laid off first. But that deal would never be negotiated because today’s teachers’ unions (unlike the old self-disciplining ‘professional’ teachers’ unions) seem to exist to protect the worst 10%. …  7:05 P.M.

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More on Unions–The Too Little, Too Late Problem: Even when unions eventually agree to necessary concessions, the tooth-pulling process of negotiation often results in a fix that’s too little, too late–and that cuts only the minimum necessary, leaving no margin for error or unforeseen events (like recessions). … Taxpayers who have followed the fortunes of General Motors and Chrysler are all too familiar with this phenomenon. But the same thing has happened in Los Angeles–where the city kept giving raises and adding jobs even as a recession loomed. When the downturn hit and revenues dropped, it took a year to negotiate cuts with the municipal unions. Now the city is up against it, facing the prospect of huge abrupt job cuts–and proposing a 28% utility rate hike to milk extra revenue from hard-pressed residents. … Phil Willon reports. … 7:23 P.M.

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