Efforts to unionize teachers in charter schools are picking up in a handful of states, and counter efforts by school administrators to tamp them down often backfire, according to a study by the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education.
Only 11.3 percent of charters have unionized staff, down by 1 percent from 10 years ago. While the majority of unionized charters—54 percent—are so because they are required to be under state law, most new unionization efforts are because schools have voluntarily chosen to organize.
Eighty percent of unionized charter schools are independent from a larger network.
However, the number of unionized charters affiliated with for-profit and nonprofit management groups has doubled since 2009—mostly through teachers choosing to organize.
