NICK GORHAM, an articulate, droll and gentlemanly state representative (not an oxymoron, it seems), has a way of stirring things up at the General Assembly. He was one of the champions of the separation-of-powers reform, which passed with 78 percent of the vote in 2004.

Now, he is proposing a measure to help the schoolchildren of Rhode Island, and he has the stacks of angry letters from teachers-union members to prove it.

The Republican lawyer from Greene, who is married to a former (and possibly future) public-school teacher, is proposing that the state stop throwing away management rights for its public schools. He (and co-sponsor Carol Mumford of Hope) wants collective bargaining to be confined to salary and benefits, with all else off-limits.

That means that management would decide such matters as hiring and firing, job-performance evaluations and whether teachers would work, say, eight-hour days to earn salaries that are now competitive with those of similarly educated professionals.

This amounts to heresy in the public-union-dominated Ocean State, and Mr. Gorham admits with a chuckle that his bill, H-7664, is unlikely to be voted out of committee.

Still, it is beginning to dawn on even the most disengaged citizens that business-as-usual on Smith Hill is producing catastrophic results.

Thanks in part to unsustainable benefits for public-employee unions, the state confronts a budget deficit of a half-billion dollars or more. And it cannot effectively tax its way out of the nightmare, since its radically high taxes (including property taxes) have already driven out jobs, businesses and many middle-class taxpayers, cutting revenues and leaving Rhode Island one of the few states in recession, while Massachusetts right next door adds jobs and boosts its tax revenues.

Rhode Island, with its beauty, superb location, intellectual infrastructure and potential for port activity, should be one of America’s booming places. Instead, its politicians have left its citizens living in fear that they will lose their jobs or be forced to pack up and leave.

The kind of thinking that brought about this economic debacle also prevails in public education. Thanks to state labor laws that tilt the playing field against taxpayers, and local officials who consistently give away the store in contract negotiations (either deliberately or because they lack the intensity and experience of their well-funded foes), the Ocean State pays one of America’s highest tabs per pupil for public schools, and gets generally mediocre results. And when even more money is invested in the schools, it seems to go into the pockets of special interests in the form of unsustainable benefits, rather than getting to students in the form of new books, science labs, sports, art, music and first-rate teaching.

It doesn’t have to be this way, Mr. Gorham argues.

A number of states, concentrated in the South and West, provide for no collective bargaining for teachers at all. Mr. Gorham insists he does not want to take away collective-bargaining rights, however — he just wants to preserve management rights that should not be on the bargaining table in the first place.

“When I ask superintendents, ‘What is the one law you would change to improve public education in the state,’ most answer: ‘You need to change the collective-bargaining law to restore management rights,’ ” he said.

Teachers are not the problem, Mr. Gorham maintains. Most truly care about helping children learn. Many admit quietly that they are troubled by growing public animosity because of the slash-and-burn, take-no-prisoners tactics of their union leaders. Teachers would be happy to be treated as well-paid and well-respected professionals, rather than as embittered hourly workers who get pressured to put union dictates ahead of helping children.

“It is the leadership that is on the wrong track, not the rank and file. I see a huge divide between the rank and file and the leadership,” Mr. Gorham said.

“I don’t think our teachers are overpaid. I think they are underpaid,” he said. Rhode Island should pay a premium to attract and retain the best.

But the right to determine how to run the schools should not be stripped away from superintendents and school committees, he argued. Managers need to be innovative. They need freedom to hire and assign the best. In the interest of helping students, and enhancing the profession of teaching, they should be able to implement best practices in use at top private schools and more free-wheeling public schools.

Such progressive ideas will surely go down in flames in the General Assembly, which usually bows to the will of the public-employee-union leaders. One has to wonder if some of these troglodyte leaders would fight to preserve the status quo until the state collapsed in economic and moral bankruptcy, a smoldering ruin. But there is a dawning sense in the public that what we are doing now is cheating our children terribly, and people who care more about students than politics are going to find the courage to speak out as time goes by.

As unthinkable as it might seem to restore the right of managers to actually manage the public schools, this is a debate well worth having.

Edward Achorn is The Journal’s deputy editorial-pages editor ( eachorn@projo.com).