CURMUDGUCATION: CA: San Diego Charter Versus The Evil Union

CURMUDGUCATION: CA: San Diego Charter Versus The Evil Union

CA: San Diego Charter Versus The Evil Union

This week you may have run across a piece entitled "How the Union Stopped Innovation at My School." The piece, which has turned up in numerous California outlets, was written by Jessica Chapman, a teacher at Gompers Preparatory Academy. Chapman's story has been steadily promoted by For Kids and Country, the organization run by Rebecca Friedrichs, a former teacher who loves Jesus and America and hates unions.

Chapman leans on an oft-repeated story about Gompers. The school was formerly a middle school in San Diego, and it was universally considered a miserable mess. The school became Gompers Preparatory Academy in 2005, a charter school that focused on college prep, including a partnership with UC San Diego. Chapman paints an inspiring picture of what "innovation" fueled. Soaring test scores, college acceptance, more rigor, and, that classic charter marketing point, 100% graduation rate. This, Chapman says, is what you get when you "remove the constraints of politics."

By that, she appears to mostly mean "getting rid of unions." Unions are why all schools aren't as wonderful as Gompers. Unions are a special interest, set up to grab all the money and deliver crappy educations to students they don't care about. The unions are out to get charters and have advanced a "deceptive" message creating "a campaign of divisiveness between traditional public schools and charter schools." And now they're "scheming to unionize charters" because....? This is CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: CA: San Diego Charter Versus The Evil Union