A Brutal Truth: Two for the Price of One

Today in the "Fashion & Style" section, the New York Times published a great story entitled "Still Doing the Math, but for $100K a Year". The union movement has been very successful in providing excellent pay and benefit packages to older teachers, regardless of their effectiveness or, for that matter, any factor other than seniority.  Some teachers in New York are receiving salaries in excess of $100k along with pensions that entitle them to retire at age 55 and receive a $65k annual pension for life and provide free health-care.   

Meanwhile, many charter schools in New York City are paying experienced but younger teachers half that amount.  (They generally pay about the same amount that a similarly-experienced teacher would make at a traditional public school but with less generous benefits.)  What do the not-for-profit charter schools do with this windfall?  Amongst other things, they hire more teachers.  Some schools have two teachers per classroom.  Others hire part-timers to give one-on-one tutoring to kids that needs extra time.  Some pay grad-school students to grade homework on an hourly basis.

How can traditional public schools compete with this if they have one unaccountable teacher per classroom that gets paid based entirely on seniority?  They can't.