Public charter schools are facing another test in Washington, D.C. This time, it’s from their own teachers.
Once upon a time, the challenges to charters were solely external. Organizations and some school staffs were threatened by a new form of public school, a form independent from ZIP code zoning and autonomous from traditional districts, driven by students’ needs, not by compliance and bureaucracy.
But the value of charters now seems to be lost even on some who are considered part of the charter school sector. Some parents at Mundo Verde Bilingual Public Charter School are inviting unions to take over their staffing, convinced by an ideological belief that the success of their exceptional charter school is unrelated to autonomy and freedom to hire and contract with nonunion teachers.
They will soon see that once a union is inside the walls and structures of an autonomous public school, it will lose its freedom, its edge, and its relentless focus on student-centered education. The record is clear: Every time a charter school unionizes, it eventually fails. Even if the school survives for a time, it will fall in demand and lose clarity of purpose.
Just consider the fate of Cesar Chavez Prep Middle School, D.C.’s only other school to attempt unionization. After years of poor performance and low enrollment at the school, the school tried a last-ditch effort, bringing in an outside consultant who helped the school raise its performance in 2017 and 2018. But teachers opposed that outside help and started the first teachers’ union at a D.C. charter. They rejected autonomy, innovation, and independence to align with a massive labor union. Now the school’s low enrollment and financial struggles, exacerbated by strong-arm union tactics, are forcing it to close for good.
In the leading states for public charters, unlike in D.C., schools and parents can rely on strong charter authorizers to protect the autonomy of charter schools and educate the public about the reality of how these schools work. In these states, authorizers are both regulators and advocates. They make clear the important distinction between district-managed public schools and independent public charter schools. They support and engage schools facing challenges. They loudly bang the drum for the celebration and expansion of schools that work.
Great authorizers do not try to mute their impact on traditional education with some fanciful notion that all options are equal. Traditional public schools are not equal, nor is their governance equal, to charters. They are vastly different, with the former subscribing to the notion that public education must be centralized, system-driven, and highly regulated to get results, and the latter subscribing to the principle that public education should be student-centered, parent- and teacher-driven, independent in financial and operational oversight, and accountable to its community.
Traditional public education has failed to educate the majority of students. It still underperforms and often fails those who are mandated and have no choice, particularly in large urban centers. In contrast, D.C. charter schools have seen higher performance gains in most categories since 2015 than every other state in the nation. Charters succeed when they adhere to the first principles of chartering, when they are independent, diverse, and self-governing with public accountability and open by choice.
But the D.C. charter school sector, once a powerful movement, is in danger of losing its ability to make distinctions between a superior form of schooling that emphasizes student fit and a form that relegates students to schools based on their ZIP codes. Traditional education has shown it can succeed in many places when it deploys the same principles as charters. But usually, public schools only appear successful when they are educating the most advantaged students. That’s only a success for wealthy families, not for schools.
Choice works, autonomy matters, and students must not be captive to adult interests, whether that’s parents or teachers following some fanciful notion that everyone must get along and unionize for education to work. The only focus should be helping kids succeed so they can indeed get along — in life and in work.
It’s time for the charter advocates in D.C. to take back their movement and fight to protect their schools’ autonomy. It’s the only way to keep innovation alive for the children of the District.
Jeanne Allen is the founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform.
