Why Charter Schools Should Fear "Card Check"

Efforts by teachers unions to infiltrate, take over and destroy charter schools from within are at this point scattered and sporadic; something confined to a few urban areas, like New York City and Chicago, where the unions are honing their tactics and rhetoric. But expect these brushfire battles for the heart and soul of charter schools to become a full-scale assault -- an inferno that could consume the charter school movement itself -- if a federal "card check" measure (more formerly and ironically called the Employee Free Choice Act) is approved by Congress.

The focus of most debate on the issue has been card check's ramifications for the country's business climate -- on whether making it easier to unionize the workplace, by taking away secret balloting, will lead to the resurgence of a union movement that only a few years ago seemed on the ropes. But an even greater concern should be what card check will do to U.S. charter schools, which unions haven't been able to stop but are now intent on co-opting and corrupting.

Card check's implications for U.S. public education is something that hasn't been adequately examined.

The lack of union influence is one of the defining characteristics of a charter school. It's part of what allows them to innovate and excel and hold teachers accountable for performance in the classroom. It's one secret to their success. But teachers unions that long scorned the schools, and tried to block or marginalize them, now understand that the charter school movement isn't going away, so they've adopted a new strategy: If you can't beat 'em, wreck 'em.

Instead of sabotaging charters from the outside, the new gambit is to undermine them from within, by burrowing in, organizing the staff, and letting union-inspired inertia do the rest. The passage of card check would greatly facilitate and hasten that process, laying the groundwork for an all-out, national assault on charter school independence.

Where can we look for a preview of what card check might mean for charter schools? We can look to Chicago, where one effort to unionize 3 charters is making headway, helped along, not coincidently, by a card check system in Illinois that would go national if Congress passes the bill. This report on the Chicago Public Radio Blog, recounting the efforts of one charter school company to fend-off a union takeover, tipped me off to the wider, national implications.

The company that operates the charter schools is appealing the union takeover to the National Labor Relations Board, claiming it isn't legit because there was no secret balloting, which violates (current) federal law. The unions argue that Illinois law -- which doesn't require a secret vote, but simply that a requisite number of pro-union signatures be gathered -- should apply. These are the rules that will be in force nation-wide if card check is approved.

"Under federal law, the three charter campuses fighting for union representation would have to hold an election to determine whether teachers want the union," according to the report. But "state law doesn’t require an election at the schools, because a majority of teachers have already signed union cards."

While the card check debate is now mostly viewed as a battle between unions and business, backers of the measure may have an even bigger trophy in mind -- the debasement, denuding and eventual destruction of the greatest recent innovation in American public education. Perhaps if the growing number of American charter school families come to realize that they have a dog in this fight -- and that their charter school could become just like every other public school if card check passes -- the tide can still be turned against this terrible piece of legislation.

Charter Schools at Risk

The New York Times on Monday offered a compelling portrait of Kashi Nelson, who teaches at a Brooklyn charter school targeted for takeover by teachers unions. Nelson first opposed and then embraced and then opposed unionization again, personifying a struggle for the heart and soul of charter schools taking place across the country.

Explains the Times:

"Ms. Nelson’s shift from union skeptic to supporter and back again provides a glimpse of the complicated and tense dance between charter schools and unions unfolding across the country.

As the number of charter schools in New York City and elsewhere swells, unions have become increasingly aggressive in trying to organize their teachers. These two major forces in education politics, having long faced off in ideological opposition, have begun in some places to enter tentative and cautious partnerships, and in others to engage in fierce combat. New York City’s teachers’ union now runs two charter schools in Brooklyn and workers have organized at many more, including more than a dozen across New York State.

Some of the most adamant supporters of charter schools say that the teachers’ union is simply trying to stymie their growth by increasing the regulations on their operation; union leaders, on the other hand, say they are just trying to ensure that teachers are given fair pay and clear guidelines for how and why they could be dismissed."

Having largely lost the battle to stop the schools, unions have adopted a new strategy -- of destroying them from within by infiltrating and organizing their staffs. And with legislation pending before Congress that would make unionizing the workplace as simple as gathering enough signatures -- the so-called card check bill -- this assault on the independence of charter schools is only likely to spread and escalate.

Freedom from union influence is one of the distinguishing characteristics of charter schools; indeed, it's one of the secrets to their success. It's what leaves the teachers free to teach, without constant reference to what's "in the contract." It's what leaves school administrators free to manage, without butting heads with obstructionists within. Absent is the adversarial relationship between "management" and "workers" that unions feed upon. These schools put the interest of students first and teachers second. And that's why unions want to obliterate that distinction.

Teachers have a choice of working at a charter school or a conventional public school. They're intelligent enough to understand the trade-offs involved. Many choose the former over the latter because of the apathy and antipathy unions frequently bring to the workplace. Thus, the idea that unions are coming to the rescue of beleaguered charter school teachers is ridiculous.

Many of these teachers have fled to charters to escape the unhealthy and unproductive influence of unions, as Nelson was when she took the job in Brooklyn. But the unions refuse to let charter schools and charter school teachers (not to mention charter school students and parents) go their own way, insisting that uniformity, conformity, lethargy and mediocrity permeate public education in America, without exception.

If allowed to go unchecked, the union takeover of charters schools threatens to undermine and eventually destroy one of the few real innovations American public education has enjoyed in recent times.

But a more practical, bottom-line motivation also lurks behind the takeovers. The popularity of charters has the tide turning decisively against unions. It represents a steady drain on union membership, union dues and union power -- which is all most unions care about anyway. Unless they find a way to co-opt charters, not only will unions experience a continuing decline in membership and money, but America will before long have two public school systems existing side my side.

One system, free from union influence, will be succeeding, while the other, anchored down by union dominance, will be failing. And that will be the most glaring evidence yet of the cancerous influence these organizations have had on American public education.