With appropriate guidelines, collective bargianing can be an important force for the improvement of American public education. The major problem now is that wholesale adoption of the private-sector bargaining model gives teachers disproportionate power in negotiations. Most state collective bargaining laws are modeled after the private-sector bargaining model, which assumes that consumers constrain the demands of both employers and employees and that failure to reach agreement results in lost profits for employers and lost wages for employees. These results are unlikely in the public sector. To make collective bargaining work for the public's benefit, a new balance of power must be achieved between teachers' representatives and the representatives of the public. Steps must also be taken to greatly increase the public's influence on educational decision-making. Reform of the collective bargaining system must be accompanied by reform of the educational governance system. (Author/JG)