Putting teachers in detention ... at a cost.

This from Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution:

Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that's what they want to do.

Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its "rubber rooms" — off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.

The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues — pretty much anything but school work....Because the teachers collect their full salaries of $70,000 or more, the city Department of Education estimates the practice costs the taxpayers $65 million a year.

Exit barriers are in effect entry barriers. Why would you employ anyone as a teacher if it is this difficult to get rid of them if they turnout not to be up to it? The employment process must be hell since you just can't take a chance on picking the wrong teacher.