Star Potential

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Robert McClure, the co-director of the NEA's Charter School Initiative, says the union has not laid out specific rules for dealing with such an organizational structure. The NEA has worked closely, however, with one teacher-led school in Minnesota. (See the accompanying story, "Northern Lights." )

According to McClure, such schools might find that certain contract issues may be harder to work out than others, depending on the local union. "There are going to be places in local associations in which they are trying very, very hard to protect a certain right that is hard-won over many, many years," he says, and the union will be less likely to grant a...