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Eric Schulzke, Deseret News

The National Education Association’s new president is making a push for unionizing charter schools, Education Week reports, working to counter a widespread myth that charter schools can’t unionize.

Teacher union advocates told Education Week that they were slow to take on charters because many initially considered them a passing fad.

They have a lot of ground to make up. According to the Center for Education Reform, the percentage of unionized charter schools dropped from 12 percent in 2009 to 7 percent in 2013.

Education Week notes that one reason charters have so far escaped unionization is that the localized governance of small schools makes teachers feel like they have a voice.

“If you’re one school, one principal, then teachers feel like they have more say in the direction of the school,” Dara B. Zeehandelaar, research manager at the Fordham Institute, told Education Week. “But if it’s a network where personal decisions are not being made at the school level, I can see that perhaps leading to an increase.”

The bad blood between charters and teacher’s unions runs deep, currently highlighted by the ongoing guerilla war between Eva Moskowitz, the founder of Success Academy Charter Schools, and the new mayor of New York, Bill Di Blasio, who has aligned himself with teacher unions. “Why do teacher unions hate Eva Moskowitz?” asks Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine this week.

The divide between unionized schools and nonunion was highlighted last year by the Wall Street Journal, which quoted from Steven Brill’s “Class Warfare,” which compares one of Moskowitz’s charters to a public school that shares its building.

“The Harlem Success teachers’ contract drives home the idea that the school is about the children, not the grown-ups,” Brill wrote. “It is one page, allows them to be fired at will, and defines their responsibilities no more specifically than that they must help the school achieve its mission. Harlem Success teachers are paid about 5 to 10 percent more than union teachers on the other side of the building who have their levels of experience.”

Brill contrasts this to the public school which shares the building: “The union contract in place on the public school side of the building is 167 pages. Most of it is about job protection and what teachers can and cannot be asked to do during the 6 hours and 57.5 minutes (8:30 to about 3:25, with 50 minutes off for lunch) of their 179-day work year.”

But as Education Week points out, not every charter that unionizes looks like a New York Public School. Consider Green Dot Public Schools, for example, a chain of charters with 21 schools in California and one in Tennessee.

“We like to talk about our contract being a thin contract compared to a large district that can have thousands of pages,” Christina G. De Jesus, Green Dot’s president and the CEO of its California schools, told Education Week.

The Vergara case attacking teacher tenure, for example, would have impact on Green Dot. “If you think about the recent Vergara case, the first-in, last-out clauses, where in a lot of union contracts the younger teachers are the first out, we don’t have that,” De Jesus told Education Week.

Kelly House, The Oregonian

Jeff Cogen has worked as an organic bakery owner, a nonprofit communications director, a political staffer and as Multnomah County’s top elected official.

One field in which he has no background? Education, the arena he’s entering as the newly hired executive director of the nonprofit behind Portland’s Leadership and Entrepreneurship Public Charter High School.

The salary is $79,000 a year.

The embattled former county chairman’s job switch is a reminder of the many ways charter schools, which have become a major feature of Oregon’s educational landscape, differ from traditional public schools.

Although Portland Public Schools’ nine charters receive district funding – last year, the district passed along $1,820,952 to Leadership and Entrepreneurship — charter administrators with political and social pull are often as valued as those with educational experience.

Christine Miles, a spokeswoman for Portland Public Schools, said the district began fielding calls almost immediately from people who thought Cogen’s new job made him a district employee and wanted to know why he was hired.

“We want to be very clear that we have nothing to do with their hiring practices,” she said of Portland charter schools. “We monitor them and house them, but we are not a part of their decision-making process.”

The ability to do things differently from mainstream public schools was part of the pitch for establishing charters, which began cropping up in Oregon in 1999 after the nation’s first opened in Minnesota in 1992. Oregon now has 125 of them.

Charters are public schools – in Portland, charter high schools receive just 4 percent less state funding per student than traditional schools – but parents or community members operate the institutions independently from the district. They are given more flexibility; licensing requirements for their teachers are more relaxed.

They must meet state and national testing standards along with specific performance goals outlined in their charter, a kind of written contract with the district. How charter school leaders achieve this is largely up to them.

Cogen addressed his qualifications to run a charter school in an email to The Oregonian on Thursday.

“While I’m not an educator,” he wrote, “for the past 15 years I’ve worked on children’s issues, first at the Commission on Children and Families and then in politics through policy and advocacy to help kids succeed.”

Tapping Cogen’s connections

One important limitation of charter schools helps explain Cogen’s role. They can’t seek voter approval for bonds to buy things like new buildings and technology. To make up for it, charter organizers must fundraise.

Kara Kerwin, president of the Center for Education Reform, said someone like Cogen can be a huge asset in this regard. Charter schools often tap well-connected politicians, community leaders or even celebrities to pull in more funds.

Cogen, who resigned as Multnomah County chairman last September following the exposure of his affair with a county staffer, still has deep roots in Portland politics.

“Having someone who can do that development is really important,” Kerwin said. “If the role is to raise the profile of the school, then you need somebody who knows how to do that.”

A few examples: Tennis star Andre Agassi sponsors charter schools across the nation, including in Indianapolis and Las Vegas. Rapper Pitbull opened one last year in Miami. Frank Biden, brother of Vice President Joe Biden, is president of theFlorida Charter School Alliance.

Cogen’s employer is the nonprofit board of KOREducators, which operates theLeadership and Entrepreneurship school.

Board chairman Gary Berger said Cogen will spend his days forging partnerships with the public and private donors that help charter schools like LEP succeed financially. Two vice principals will handle the school’s day-to-day operations.

Cogen’s is a new position at LEP, where fundraising was formerly a duty of the principal. This year, the KOREducators board decided to rearrange the school’s leadership structure.

“We’re doing well enough financially, but we’re not doing as well as we would like to,” Berger said.

The school has regained financial stability after budgeting problems in 2009 nearly led to its closure. Now, LEP leaders hope to find a bigger building with a library and gymnasium. They also want to buy more classroom resources for students.

But, Berger noted, they need more money to accomplish those goals.

Berger said Cogen would also be responsible for convincing local business leaders to participate in the school’s internship program. Every LEP student must complete an internship before graduating.

“With a political background, obviously he’s able to engage people and do that work effectively,” Berger said.

Hiring standards

Cogen’s lack of a professional background as an educator is one common question about his hiring. The other is the ethics inquiry that led to his resignation as county chairman in 2013.

Cogen said he doesn’t expect his controversial past to undermine his ability to recruit partners and donors for LEP.

“I think most people in our community care more about the work I’ve done than the personal mistakes I’ve made,” he said. “More importantly, I think people and organizations will want to support LEP because of the great work they are doing with kids.”

The state Department of Justice conducted a lengthy investigation to determine whether or not Cogen violated any laws while carrying on an affair with an employee, some of which unfolded on county-paid travel out of state. The investigation also turned up allegations by the employee, Sonia Manhas, that Cogen used illegal drugs.

Investigators concluded that no charges should be filed.

Berger said the charter school’s hiring team, which picked him over more than 20 applicants for the job, was confident Cogen has worked out any issues of infidelity or claims about drug use with his family, but “of course, we were looking for his professional capacities.”

None of the Leadership and Entrepreneurship school’s teachers are Portland Public Schools employees, and the district has no say in the school’s hiring policies.

State law requires all charter school employees to receive background checks through the state, but it doesn’t mandate drug tests. Cogen said the high school doesn’t drug test its employees, either.

“We believe in second chances,” Berger said, “and we think he has a lot to offer.”

Daniel Doherty, Town Hall

In 1832, during his first public address, Abraham Lincoln laid out what he believed to be the key to social and economic advancement: a quality education.

“Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we, as a people, can be engaged in,” he observed. “That every man may receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance.”

Then as now, Lincoln, of course, was right.

And yet for too many schoolchildren, a quality education still remains out of reach. The 2013 National Assessment of Education Progress—otherwise known as the so-called “Nation’s Report Card”—found that 32 percent of fourth graders and 22 percent of eighth graders tested “below basic” reading levels. Put another way, nearly one-fourth of students entering high school cannot read at grade level, and experience shows they probably never will.

So much for reading the histories of America and other countries so that our kids can “appreciate the value of our free institutions.”

Worse, our nation’s schools are falling behind international competitors. The Program for International Student Assessment tests 15 and 16-year-olds in 64 countries across the globe in math, science, and reading every year. In 2012, the most recent year available, the United States finished 26th, 20th, and 17th in math, science, and reading, respectively, among the 34 member states that comprise the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Alarmingly, that test was by no means an outlier. For example, only 56 percent of undergraduates in the United States currently earn a bachelor’s degree within six years, according to a 2012 Harvard Graduate School of Education study. That means more than 40 percent of U.S. students who begin college either do not finish in six years or do not finish at all. These students are left with both the crushing debt of a college education, and no degree to help them pay it off.

Democrats often call for more money to be spent on education, as additional funding seems to be the Left’s solution to everything. But the U.S. government already allocates more money to educate its citizens than any other developed country, more than $11,000 and $12,000 a year on each elementary and high school student.

So what can conservatives offer as an alternative?

CHAMPIONING SCHOOL CHOICE

School vouchers, which usually come in the form of government-funded scholarships, are an exciting opportunity available to families with children trapped in failing school districts, and are of- ten provided to low-income families, allowing parents to privately educate their children.

Part of the reason why so many children, especially from inner cities and rural areas, cannot escape schools that are failing them, is because their families simply cannot afford to send them anywhere else. Student vouchers, therefore, open doors of opportunity that otherwise would not exist.

Certainly, any program that gives families more choice and freedom in how they educate their children is a positive step forward. But while effective, vouchers are often limited in both scope and practicality. For many voucher programs, only government-sanctioned private schools are allowed to accept a school voucher. That limits access and choice.

At the same time, families with special-needs children, or families who simply want to educate their children holistically or in the home, will find school vouchers unhelpful. So while they can be a helpful tool for some, school vouchers are not the solution for everyone.

There is, however, perhaps a more comprehensive option, one that is gaining momentum in education reform circles across the country: education savings accounts.

THE ESA ADVANTAGE

“Parents can choose from a variety of different educational services and options with an education savings account,” the Goldwater Institute’s education director, Jonathan Butcher, told Townhall. “Vouchers have one purpose, and helping families send their children to private schools [have] been very important in the areas in which vouchers are in place.”

However, since the ways in which families are accessing education are changing so quickly, Butcher explained, the savings accounts give families tremendous flexibility and access that vouchers do not.

The way ESAs are intended to work is simple: the state deposits money into a private bank account, which furnishes families with the financial capital to educate their children in ways that will improve educational outcomes. And parents are getting excited about them.

“Education savings accounts are an innovative part of the future of learning,” Butcher said. “Some children learn best at the kitchen table with their parents, others working online on their own, and others in a classroom—and education savings accounts help families meet the unique needs of their children, no matter their skill level or where they decide the best place and way for their children to learn.”

This is why families are increasingly turning to ESAs every single year.

ARIZONA LEADS THE WAY

The Goldwater Institute, a liberty-minded think tank in Phoenix, Arizona, helped design this relatively new program, known formally as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. And, in fact, the organization was instrumental in getting the first ESA law passed in the United States.

“The Goldwater Institute designed education savings accounts in 2005,” Butcher said. “And we were active in crafting the nation’s first law in Arizona, defending the accounts and ultimately winning the lawsuit on the accounts’ constitutionality here, and expanding eligibility.”

The law was first adopted in April 2011, but during the first year it was offered, only families with special needs children could apply. Since 2012, however, ESAs have been dramatically broadened to include hundreds of thousands of school children.

According to the Center for Arizona Policy, children who meet certain criteria—i.e., those attending schools with ‘D’ or ‘F’ rankings, with special needs, living in foster homes, or who have parents serving in the military, among other prerequisites—are all eligible to apply. This amounts to roughly 200,000 students in Arizona, according to the Center for Education Reform.

And the program is fiscally solvent. Instead of paying for students to attend public schools, the state government will cover 90 percent of the costs Arizona would otherwise have been compelled to pay to educate them traditionally. Moreover, money that isn’t spent during a given academic year need not be returned to the state. Par- ents can save unspent money for their children’s college fund, or spend it on other education-related expenses the next semester.

This is a laudable goal for a program that has only existed for a few years, and suggests more states might be open to experimenting with it in the future.

Indeed, that already seems to be the case. “Arizona and Florida have passed education savings accounts into law. Arizona’s program is entering its fourth year, while Florida’s program just became law in June,” Butcher said. “Lawmakers in Mississippi, Oregon, Oklahoma, Iowa, Montana, Utah, Missouri, to name a few, have introduced legislation that would give families in their state the ability to use education savings accounts.”

HOME SCHOOLING SUCCESSES

Lynn McMurray and her husband, Tim, hail from Phoenix, Arizona, and have three adopted children who have benefited measurably from ESAs: Alicia, 15, Uriah, 11, and Valerie, 11. The McMurrays first became interested in ESAs when Alicia was preparing to attend the local public high school; but the school just didn’t seem like the right fit.

“When I went to the high school and realized that the emotionally disabled and cognitively delayed would be in the same classroom, I said, ‘I don’t know about this,’” she told Townhall. “And that’s nothing against the school; they just don’t have one-on-one care for every child. I understand that, there’s no money for that, and I get that.”

But of her daughter, she said, “her needs weren’t being met.”

Since leaving the public school system, however, Alicia has made significant progress.

“Since she’s been home-schooled … she has soared,” McMurray said. “People have met her and said, ‘what have you done and why is the light bulb on?’”

“I tell them ‘I didn’t do anything,’” she continued. “I’m just keeping her at home and between myself, the tutors, and the occupation therapist, [she’s made real progress].”

Uriah is proudly described by his mother as “brilliant.” But because of his congenital shyness, he was beginning to fall behind. He was afraid to ask questions in class, and therefore was failing multiple subjects, even though his mother knew he understood the course material he was studying.

Arizona’s ESA program changed his life.

“I’m in my office one day and I hear him say to his sister, Valerie, ‘We haven’t done this yet, let’s go work on our science,’” she beamed. “He wanted to work on it. Before ESAs, he had the Monday and Friday flu every week. He was getting depressed, he was beating himself up, his self-esteem was extremely low.”

Not anymore, she said. Now he enjoys learning, and even reading books in his free time, a remarkable turnaround in a remarkably short period of time.

The same can be said of her youngest daughter, Valerie, who is also benefiting from the program, despite the fact that she has cerebral palsy.

“There’s nothing wrong with [her] mind, it’s just that her leg doesn’t work very well,” McMurray said. “She’s extremely social but because she has a limp, people would often make fun of her.”

The flexibility offered by ESAs allow Lynn and her husband to educate their children at home, where they are more focused on their schoolwork, and do not risk being bullied or distracted by their classmates.

Nonetheless, despite her positive experience with the program, McMurray said choosing to participate in the ESA program is an important but difficult decision, and isn’t for everyone.

“It’s not fun and games,” she cautioned. “It’s not babysitting. You are the money manager for your child’s education. You don’t just get to sit and assume they’re going to learn it.”

She explained that in her own experience, she’s seen parents mismanage their children’s education funds, and even “take advantage” of the program’s generous subsidies. Critics of the program, for their part, would also argue that ESAs divert funds from the public education system, and therefore make it harder for teachers to teach effectively given ever-tightening school budgets. Nevertheless, McMurray loves the flexibility that ESAs provide her and her husband. And, overall, is quite satisfied with it.

“Applying was easy,” she said. “I love the credit cards. There are three different credit cards for three different kids. I can call and see what’s on it, what’s not. I love the fact that I don’t have to use it all in one semester.”

“I love the freedom,” she said.

And, of course, the results speak for themselves.

“They can learn more in one hour at home than they can in eight hours [at school],” she said.

THE ROAD AHEAD

No government program can fix all of our public education woes. And, in truth, many public school systems are doing just fine.

But more aggressive programs, such as the ESAs adopted in Arizona, at least give students and parents, in the right circumstances, real opportunities to tailor their children’s educations in ways that work best for them.

For decades, children with special-needs or distinct learning patterns— that is, children like Alicia, Uriah, and Valerie—have been consigned to schools that are not a good fit for them, even if these settings are workable for traditional students. ESAs expand opportunity, and have shown the potential to improve the educational outcomes of those who participate in, and take advantage of, such programs.

Consider each of the following questions:

How many parents across the country would like to home-school their children, but don’t have the money to buy textbooks and supplies?

How many parents would like to enroll their sons or daughters in online classes, but can’t pull together the necessary resources?

How many parents would like to educate their children by mixing and matching both traditional classes with private tutoring options, but feel hamstrung by burdensome regulations and red tape?

ESAs provide an outlet for parents to do all this and more.

ESAs will not work for every parent, nor is this the intent. But as part of the broader education reform movement, they provide important benefits, and should therefore be available to any well-intentioned parent who is willing to commit to their proper use.

Arianna Prothero, Education Week

A pair of small charter schools sharing the same campus in Alameda, Calif., received a big-name visitor last month: the new president of the National Education Association, Lily Eskelsen García.

At first blush, a charter school may seem like a strange forum for the head of the country’s largest teachers’ union to hold a press conference, but the Alameda Community Learning Center and the Nea Community Learning Center are rarities in the charter sector because the schools’ teaching staffs are unionized. Ms. Garcia was in California to help encourage more charter schools to do the same.

The California Teachers Association, or the CTA, the NEA’s largest state affiliate, officially listed charter school organizing as a focus area in its long-term strategic plan in January after nibbling around the issue for two years. However, the national charter sector remains largely union-free despite the efforts of the country’s two largest teachers’ unions, the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers.

“To be frank, it’s new and it’s also something internally that we had to wrestle with,” said Terri L. Jackson, who is a member of the California Teachers Association’s board of directors. “I believe when charter schools first came on the scene, a lot of educators thought it [the charter movement] was going to be a fad.”

But with more than 6,000 charter schools nationwide, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, teachers’ unions at every level have been revamping their stance toward their charter brethren.

Earlier Efforts

National charter-organizing initiatives from the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers date back to around 2007 and the economic downturn when, according to several union organizers, many former district teachers found themselves in charter schools because they were the only jobs available.

“We started actively organizing charter schools pretty much right as they began evolving—first in New York, where my predecessor Al Shanker supported charters as hubs of innovation, then in Florida and throughout the country,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said in an email to Education Week.

Several charter schools belonging to high-profile networks in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York were unionized in 2009, setting off speculation that there might be a wave of organizing efforts. But the number of charters unionizing each year seems to remain at a relative trickle.

An Education Week search found that so far in 2014, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and New Orleans each had one local charter school unionized while St. Paul, Minn., had two. And earlier this summer, the staff at a charter school in Marlborough, Mass., voted to join the local Teamsters union because staff members, worried by anti-charter sentiments, feared they wouldn’t get fair representation from the local teachers’ union.

Nationally, the percentage of unionized charter schools has dropped from 12 percent in 2009 to 7 percent in 2012, according to an annual survey by the Center for Education Reform, a Washington-based research and advocacy group.

Reasons Why

There are varying theories as to why unions haven’t gotten a firm foothold in the charter market. Charter school advocates contend their teachers are committed to the belief that educational innovation depends on school autonomy, including freedom from burdensome collective-bargaining contracts.

Union organizers paint a different picture. They point to a persistent myth that charter school employees can’t unionize and to hostile charter school managers who squash organizing efforts by lawyering up and punishing teachers who try.

However, union advocates say they are adapting to the charter sector. One AFT organizer said it will abandon any unionizing effort that doesn’t have strong parental support and at least 90 percent of a school’s staff members on board.

But even if a charter school staff does join a union, it doesn’t mean its contract will looklike those for educators in its more-typical, district-run counterparts.

Green Dot Public Schools, a chain of 21 schools in California and one in Memphis, Tenn., has had unionized staff since it began 15 years ago. Its unions are CTA-affiliated.

“We like to talk about our contract being a thin contract compared to a large district that can have thousands of pages,” said Christina G. De Jesus, Green Dot’s president and the CEO of its California schools. For example, there is no recognition of teacher tenure. “If you think about the recent Vergara case, the first-in, last-out clauses, where in a lot of union contracts the younger teachers are the first out, we don’t have that,” said Ms. De Jesus.

Whether unionization starts to pick up in the charter sector may depend on how charters evolve. The growth of large charter networks could create more incentives for teachers to organize if charter chains start to function more like large bureaucratic school districts.

“If you’re one school, one principal, then teachers feel like they have more say in the direction of the school,” said Dara B. Zeehandelaar, the research manager at the Washington-based Fordham Institute, a research and advocacy group. “But if it’s a network where personal decisions are not being made at the school level, I can see that perhaps leading to an increase.”

Both state and national organizers believe unionization efforts will slowly pick up and build as more charter staffs join unions.

Several organizers said the most powerful tool in their toolbox is word of mouth and people like Carrie Blanche. Ms. Blanche is a special education teacher at the Alameda Community Learning Center recently visited by the NEA’s president.

“I tell everyone that I meet in conversation after conversation about what we’ve done in the hopes that the info will get out to other charter school teachers,” she said.

Suzanne Spencer, WSBT-TV

South Bend school officials are expecting dropping enrollment numbers for the fifth straight year in a row.

Based on trends through the years, officials say they expect between 100 and 150 students to leave the district.

Along with lower enrollment numbers comes less money. The School Board announced the general fund budget is $1 million less than 2014.

“That’s not a significant amount that would require reductions in jobs,” says Superintendent Carole Schmidt. “At least at this point.”

One student brings nearly $6,000 to local schools. But Dr. Schmidt says there is more to blame than money.

“We’re dealing with the voucher situation here in Indiana,” says Dr. Schmidt.

Indiana’s voucher program was named one of the best in the country according to a study from the Center for Education Reform. According to data, Indiana accepts a wider range of financial backgrounds and circumstantial situations.

But Dr. Schmidt says it pulls kids away from South Bend Schools.

“My overall sense is that we have children who are leaving our district, taking the vouchers, and going to private schools,” says Dr. Schmidt. “They would stay with us if the vouchers weren’t there.”

Other programs like open-enrollment, which allow kids to attend private schools for free, act as an alternative for vouchers.

P-H-M has had success with the program — so much so that they had to limit open enrollment to Kindergarten through second graders.

More than half of the students who attend P-H-M from out of the district, are from South Bend. But only 80 students enrolled in South Bend schools from other districts.

“It always worries me. Everything worries me,” says Dr. Schmidt. “A drop in student enrollment always worries us because that’s a source of major revenue.”