Can Teachers Unions Help Online Charter Schools?
After a lengthy battle, California teachers have won the right to form a union in their online charter school network.
In a major win for the movement to organize charter schools, a California state labor board recently ruled that teachers working for the state’s largest online charter network could form a union.
Teachers for the network, known as the California Virtual Academies, have been battling since April of 2014 with administration officials who refused to negotiate. That’s when more than two-thirds of the so-called CAVA network’s teachers voted in favor of unionizing.
Roughly 15,000 students attend CAVA’s 11 campuses across the state. CAVA administrators had argued that teachers at those disparate campuses should form their own individual unions instead of organizing a single union that would represent them all.
In a 77-page legal decision, the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) rejected this argument—setting the stage for CAVA teachers to move forward with their network-wide union. The California Teachers Association (CTA), a state affiliate of the National Education Association, will serve as their exclusive bargaining representative.
To teachers who have been agitating for a union, gaining the leverage to improve working conditions is a key first step to boosting student performance—something the online charter sector greatly needs. The teachers’ labor victory comes on the heels of several recent reports concluding that online charter schools are performing extremely poorly. Some 200,000 students take online classes through such institutions nationwide.
“Academic benefits from online charter schools are currently the exception rather than the rule,” stated researchers in a report released by the Center for Research on Academic Outcomes on October 27. It was one of three different research studiesreleased last month that arrived at similar conclusions.
Earlier this year, the progressive group In the Public Interest, which focuses on Can Teachers Unions Help Online Charter Schools?:
