Here’s what Mayor Bloomberg had to say recently on the subject of vouchers: “The first thing we are going to do is improve the public school system, the traditional public school system….The Department of Education is here to do what the traditional school system needs.” Actually, this quotation is only recent in a broad sense — it’s from December. Despite the teachers union turning on his school reform plan, the mayor is singing the same tune, saying yesterday: “For the moment, if we started focusing on vouchers it would be disruptive to the process….We’ve got to focus on making what we have work better.”

The mayor’s thinking seems to be jumbled on this subject, a point we noted a few months ago. If we wait for the school system to improve on its own, why would we need vouchers once that’s happened? Of course, the Tweed Trust won’t reform on its own. So one can only assume the mayor was stalling. When Mr. Bloomberg and his newly appointed schools chancellor, Joel Klein, were starting down the road to school reform, perhaps they believed they could ease their way by avoiding an issue that so raises the dander of Randi Weingarten and her friends. We thought it was a mistake at the time, but at least the strategy was discernable. Now, however, with the union in full revolt — even having filed a lawsuit calling Mr. Klein in effect a racist for laying off some para professionals in the middle of a historic budget crisis — there’s no explanation. To take vouchers off the table is backwards bargaining, no matter what the mayor’s and the chancellor’s personal views are.