“The outcomes that we see are dictated by risk-reward ratios that would not work in any other sector and will not work if they are perpetrated in ours.… There’s no real reason to take risks in our system because they aren’t rewarded… Indeed, they are often punished.… Unions don’t have to micro-regulate schools through a contract… When I ran a law firm, we didn’t do business like that. . . . We need a system that allows us to remove teachers who are incompetent or excessively absent or late.”

— Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, Thursday, October 16, 2003, before the Citizens Committee for Children at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.

Those were the kinds of phrases with which Chancellor Klein doffed the costume he donned upon taking the reins at the Department of Education, that of placid bureaucrat, and emerged in what we’ve long been hoping would be his true identity: Joel Klein, trustbuster. New Yorkers will be cheering him on as he seeks now, in a showdown on a contract that affects how much flexibility the city will have in deploying its $12 billion schools budget, to break the grip through which the teachers union has been blocking reform of public education in the city and the improvement in the prospects in life for our children.

It is a radical step for Mr. Klein to come out and define the teachers’ contract not only in terms of its potential impact on city finances but on our children as well. “Schools will never work because they’re governed by a 250-page contract and a 10,000-page book of regulations,” he said. In particular, Mr. Klein has taken aim at the issue of seniority, which gives teachers who have punched time clocks the longest a number of perks, while reserving none of the perks for the children.

Under the contract, these teachers have first pick at the best schools. If they are denied a job, they can file a grievance, which virtually forces principals to hire them. Education expert Sol Stern, author of “Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice,” told The New York Sun yesterday that the chancellor hit the nail on the head by attacking seniority. The issue, according to Mr. Stern, is “the idea of seniority versus the idea of excellence.” Seniority, he said, pervades every part of the school system at the expense of excellence. While the United Federation of Teachers shot back at Mr. Klein that only a few hundred teachers receive seniority transfers every year, those transfers add up quickly into thousands of teachers who hold their jobs solely on the basis of time served. Furthermore, Mr. Stern said, the concept of seniority infects the pay and promotion tracks — again, at the expense of merit.

Mr. Klein sees this scheme as what it is: vastly inefficient. “We have a system in which our least experienced and most eager teachers inevitably are put almost exclusively in our most challenging schools,” he said.”That’s so profoundly unfair to our children and our teachers.”As a result, Mr. Klein said, we lose about 20% of our first-year teachers, and about 40% of new teachers quit by the third year.

Seniority, however, is not the only regulation that makes it impossible to properly deploy the resources already in our schools. Mr. Stern has labeled the UFT contract the “we-don’t-do-windows” contract. Among the things teachers can’t be asked to do under the contract: walk children to a school bus, patrol the lunchrooms or the hallways or the yards, cover extra classes in an emergency, come in more than one day before classes begin at the start of the year, attend more than one staff meeting a month, and attend a staff meeting during lunch. The contract also governs the lengths of classes at every school, the amount of preparation time teachers get before classes, and the process for teachers’ performances to be reviewed.

So, Mr. Klein is seeking some new powers: the power to pay teachers in some subjects, such as math and science where demand has been outstripping supply, more than teachers in other subjects; the power to fire incompetent and lazy teachers, and the power to place teachers where they are needed most. It remains to be seen whether even such a celebrated trust buster as Joel Klein can beat the teachers union without first establishing an escape hatch for the pupils, such as could be done with a real voucher system. The teachers have such a beef with the new curriculum in the city that Mr. Klein may have something to bargain with. But anger in the city at the cynicism of the union on work rules and related matters is palpable. So Mr. Klein goes into this fight with millions of New Yorkers rooting for him to win.