Central Falls, Rhode Island, is a poor town in a state with very high unemployment, and its school system is one of the worst in the state. And one of the most expensive too--and it's funny how those so often go hand-in-hand. The teachers make about 3.5 times the average townsman's salary, and half of their students are failing all of their classes.

The superintendent, Ms. Frances Gallo, knew she had to do something. She asked the teachers, who have of course an iron-clad union, to teach 25 minutes more a day, help in tutoring, and eat lunch with the students once a week. That was too much of course to ask of the teachers. They refused.

Superintendent Gallo has fired about 100 high-school teachers, administrators and assistants. A bit more detail here.

This reminds me of the time that President Reagan fired the striking air-traffic controllers. PATCO, the union, was decertified in 1981, and twenty-five years later I heard Robert Poli, the quondam union chief who lead them off a cliff, still snarling about Robert Reagan. Robert, you lost, you cost a lot of people their jobs, and you destroyed your union.

Over Christmas I was dining with friends in Las Vegas. P. has a job as administrator in a program that trains people to work in the service industry on the Strip. I remarked, foolishly it seems, that even though Vegas is having financial problems now, at least it won't be ruined by unions like Detroit. I was told that that is precisely the worry. With a day's training one can get a job as a bar back for $14.00 an hour, and tips.

Without question there have been times and places for unions; mine owners were until not that long ago extraordinarily vicious and grasping to their help, keeping them indebted by forcing them to buy from the company store. But it is the unions that ruined Detroit, the American automobile industry and American education.

This does not have, of course, the effect of Ronald Reagan's action, which set an example for private business to follow when hiring and firing unionized workers, but still, it's a good start and tremendously bracing.

Brava, Superintendent Gallo.