Paying For Grades
In the wake of Gov. Deval Patrick’s filing of legislation to double the number of public charter schools in the state, the American Federation of Teachers has resumed its push to unionize charter schools.
Fortunately, only one charter school in the entire state has unionized in the last two years. Unionization, while perhaps advantageous for teachers, would invariably stunt much of the entrepreneurial energy that has made many charter schools a stunning success.
Charter schools aren’t prohibited from unionizing, so it’s to the credit of their employees and administrators that they’ve recognized the significant pitfalls involved in doing so. Without a union, charter schools are free to be run much more like a small business: innovative, nimble and lean.
If a charter school wants to experiment with a longer or shorter school day, its curriculum, class size or teaching format, it is free to do so. Administrators at charter schools are free to dismiss teachers that are underperforming or simply unfit for the job, whether they’ve been teaching for two years or 20 years.
So, turnover at charter schools is high. But at a unionized school, it is almost impossible to fire unmotivated and underperforming, yet well-paid teachers. Instead, they linger, getting in the way of motivated and capable colleagues while the whole institution suffers from their indifference.
Recently, Barbara E. McGann, executive director of the Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School in Marlborough, told the Telegram & Gazette that she expects the American Federation of Teachers to become more aggressive in its efforts to unionize charter schools now that caps on the number of charter schools allowed in many states have been lifted.
Achievement Gap
Governor Patrick’s proposal to double the number of charter schools in the Bay State fits in with President Barack Obama’s announcement last month of a competition for $4.35 billion in federal financing for states that ease restrictions on charter schools and adopt certain charter school standards for unionized public school districts.
As it stands, paying teachers for demonstrated classroom success, and other less fundamental changes would, at a unionized public school, require years of negotiations. Entrenched teachers unions are a huge and powerful lobby, and protection of their members and their interests would inevitably muddy the kind of clean incentive plans that can be executed in Charter schools quite quickly.
McGann also said that many teachers at the academy are there after deliberately leaving union school districts “because they didn’t feel it spoke for them.”
Recent union progress in signing up and protecting unskilled workers across many industries from a wide variety of abuses in recent years has been admirable. Making sure workers in some of the most thankless positions in society earn enough to support their families is a critical and needed role in our society.
But teachers are generally highly skilled, well-educated and in demand. They are more than capable of deciding for themselves whether they’ll be treated fairly by a school district and they’re smart enough to read and understand the needs and shortcomings of district budgets.
The collaborative and collegial relationship that many charter school administrators and teachers enjoy today has had a great impact on the success of those schools. It’s part of the culture that has helped charter schools to prosper and in many cases outperform unionized public school districts. We believe that entrepreneurial energy and innovation, along with a less cumbersome system for performance accountability in charter schools is a good thing. There are many excellent public school systems in our state, and charter schools remain an imperfect work in progress. Yet wouldn’t it be great if one could learn from the other, and that our unionized districts could open themselves to the suggestions from the Governor and the President that they should adopt many of the innovative and flexible elements that have made charter schools so successful, and not the other way around.
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