Head of the Mass. Public Charter School Association predicts apocalypse if charter school teachers unionize: it "'would spell the end of innovations' at the alternative schools because principals would lose flexibility in hiring and firing."
I still think that equating unions with lack of flexibility and innovation is missing the whole potential of unionized charter schools. There's no reason that a charter school whose teachers are in a union has to abide by the contract that governs the whole district. Yes, the proposed UFT charters in New York are going to use the city's contract, but that's to prove the point that it's not the contract that stifles achievement. Even so, it looks like hiring will be done by the school itself, not some faceless bureaucracy.
A unionized school hiring its own teachers? What's next, a golden retriever summoned to court?
1 comment:
Hi Leo,
Thank you for reading and for that excellent point. One of the charters I work with, which has been referred to as one of the high-performing charters on this last round of tests, is also a conversion and therefore a UFT school. I might argue that their success is due in part to the fact that, as a conversion, they've been running far longer (and there's a correlation between how long a charter's been open and how well its students perform), as well as the fact that charter start-ups tend to attract teachers with fewer years of experience.
That's why I think it was a good idea for these propsed UFT charters to be start-ups rather than conversions (as many people who oppose the charter school cap have been suggesting they do). If these schools succeed academically, it will not be because they simply have been around longer.
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