“I’m going on four chancellors now,” says Council Member Eva Moskowitz of Manhattan, who chairs the City Council’s education committee. “Multiple chancellors have acknowledged this problem, but no one gets around to changing it.”

The problem is that New York State offers no licensing reciprocity to teachers certified in other states, which inhibits the city’s ability to recruit new teachers. “We’ve had what I view as a protectionist, anti-free trade policy, and it is not good for New York,” Ms. Moskowitz told us. “We have a terrible shortage of teachers, especially in math and science and special education. We should be able to recruit talented personnel from other states.”

New York recognizes driver’s licenses from other states. Out-of-state lawyers can be admitted to the bar in New York without sitting for a new examination, provided they meet certain conditions. “It’s common practice for professionals to have an exchange with other states. Teachers are professionals and should have the same kind of practice,” says Ms. Moskowitz.

The council member wouldn’t be making a fuss about the policy, she says, if it were meant to ensure that New York only certifies teachers of high quality. But education officials – including the head of human resources at the city’s Education Department, Betsy Arons, who recently testified before Ms. Moskowitz’s committee – tell her that’s not the case. In fact, 48 states use exactly the same certification exam that New York does.

Former education chancellors, such as Harold Levy and Rudy Crew, have also told the education committee that teacher quality is not the issue. “There seems to be no good reason for it,” says Ms. Moskowitz. So she’s asking the state education commissioner, Richard Mills, and the New York Board of Regents “to either come up with a good reason, or cross out the regulation.”

On Friday, Ms. Moskowitz dispatched a letter to Mr. Mills and the members of the board. She asked them to begin offering reciprocity to teachers licensed in other states. “We should figure out what our own standard is, and figure out what the analogous standard is in other states,” she told us. Most education reforms take years, but, she said, “This is a small but significant change that could be made tomorrow.”

New Yorkers can only benefit if the regents accede to Ms. Moskowitz’s request. No one, not even the leaders of the city’s education bureaucracy, regards the current policy as worthwhile. Of all the problems hindering New York’s educational system, simple inertia shouldn’t be one of them.