Thanks to the courage of political leaders and other outspoken citizens, Rhode Island made some strong strides during this year’s legislative session toward schools that focus more on the needs of students, and less on benefits for politically well-organized adults. The General Assembly adopted a series of welcome reforms:

• Teachers’ contracts — indeed, all municipal contracts — may no longer stipulate a specific health-insurance company. This hard-fought reform will stimulate competition among insurers for the business, which should save cities and towns millions of dollars that could be applied toward educating students.

• The “mayoral academy” concept pushed by Cumberland Mayor Daniel McKee and his fellow leaders in Pawtucket, Lincoln and Central Falls won approval. The change will let the communities create a regional school run by a nonprofit organization, free to set its own salary and benefit structure for teachers. Such a school could be modeled to better serve the interests of students, using, among other things, the best practices found in some private schools.

• The ban on new charter schools in Rhode Island is lapsing, since the General Assembly defied calls to extend it. Such institutions are public schools that can operate with more flexibility and experimentation than permitted in regular ones. This is very welcome, especially for poor children trapped in poorly performing regular public schools. Such students have often been stuck on long waiting lists and denied access to popular existing charter schools.

Teachers unions, which in the past have wielded enormous power on Smith Hill, opposed these measures, contending that they would undermine their negotiating rights and divert resources from regular public schools. But most Rhode Island taxpayers realize that the state has been very generous, paying some of the highest per-pupil costs in the country while getting generally mediocre results in its public schools. The state’s students deserve better.

Fresh ideas and competition should help public schools, by demonstrating ways to do things better.

These may seem like baby steps toward reform, but it took political courage for legislative leaders to champion these changes. Let us hope they are the harbingers of more serious reforms that shift the focus of public education more to students. This should include contracts that give administrators more rights to assign and reward teachers, especially those who work in tough urban schools, and directing money back to music, art, sports and other important programs and textbooks and equipment rather than to unsustainably generous fringe benefits for teachers.

These may seem like dreams given hard-core opposition to change in the past. But even Cuba has moved toward such reforms as merit pay in its government-run businesses. And it is enormously encouraging that Rhode Island’s political leaders displayed real backbone this year in fighting for the state’s students. Citizens applaud them.