Recent teacher strikes in Los Angeles and Oakland, California were resolved, in part by increased pay and limiting charter schools. The exceptional power of teacher unions, which fear and loathe charter schools, directly contributed to the decisions made by school boards beholding to the unions for their election campaign funding.
These recent school board decisions were nothing more than teacher unions coercing them to eliminate the competition.
Stipulating there are poor-to-unsatisfactory charter schools, just as there are poor-to-unsatisfactory conventional public schools; outstanding public school teachers, just as there are exceptionally poor ones (protected by onerous teachers bargaining union agreements); a closer examination of the problems with public education reveals one simple fact.
Charter schools would not be an attractive option for parents if traditional public schools did a better job creating a positive environment and educating students. It comes as no surprise that policies governing public schools in mainly liberal areas of the country are abysmal, making charters more attractive. For example, soft on suspension policies, such as in New York City, create chaotic campuses and classrooms, in which learning takes a distant second place to safety concerns. Disruptive students, uncontrolled and unpunished by parents, dominate classrooms, up to and including assaulting teachers and staff. And fewer and fewer are suspended. Why? Because of a false flag of racial disparity in suspensions. It matters not the race or ethnic group of the student who tells the teacher to F*** Off, maybe throwing a chair for good measure. Such behavior warrants immediate consequence, including removal from the classroom and school for three-to-five days. This absence of basic classroom discipline ensures poor-to-unsatisfactory educational environment, leading parents to look for better options.
Across the nation, those with the resources pay for private schooling, including parochial schools. This option is not available to the majority of parents, so they must either accept the unacceptable or pursue something else. That something else led to the birth and growth of the charter school movement across the U.S. It costs the family nothing more for their children to attend charter schools than it does to attend the public schools, into which more and more dollars have been dumped, without a corresponding improvement in education.
California was recently ranked 47 of 50 in public education, proving its approach to throwing more and more money at it does not work. Parents are wise consumers, seeing that it is not working, so they seek out charter schools. Competition at its best.
When students move from a traditional public school, state provided funding goes with them to the charter school. This means, in districts like Oakland and Los Angeles, the public school have fewer butts in seats, meaning fewer teachers are needed. Fewer teachers means less union dues (Note: in the wake of the JANUS decision public sector union membership is declining, even as teacher unions manipulate the process by which members can resign, concurrently strong arming those desiring to resign.) Now the real crux of the matter presents itself. Money.
Fewer teachers are required in union dominant traditional public schools due to declining enrollment as families move their children to non-union dominant charter schools. Combined with the JANUS Supreme Court decision, this means significantly fewer potential dues paying members in teacher unions. Fewer dues paying members means less money into the union coffers. Less money in union coffers means less money for supporting elections, so the unions created leverage by means of the strikes.
During the Oakland and Los Angels strikes, one major union objective was to curtail or eliminate the competing charter schools. Be assured, this objective had nothing to do with improving education, because if the traditional Oakland and Los Angeles public schools were seen by families to be doing a good job teaching their children, there would not be a desire to go to a charter. Parents are consumers of a product: public education. They pay for the product by their tax dollars, allocated by what California calls Average Daily Attendance funding from the state based on per student funds calculated by attendance. When an inferior product (poor-to-unsatisfactory public education) is foisted upon them, parents take their tax dollars to buy a superior product: charter school education. So in their minds, teacher unions had to tamp down or eliminate the competition that is wooing away families by providing a better product.
Rather than improve the traditional pubic school education, effectively removing the aforementioned motivation, unbelievably some boards of education kowtowed to the unions and effectively agreed to eliminating the competition. In Oakland and Los Angeles, they could not legally eliminate the charters, so they did the next best thing, worked on capping new charters. (As an aside, the lousy state of public education in the two named school districts drives the demand for new charters.) It will not come as a surprise that unions are pressuring approving school districts and school boards to withhold renewing of charters.
It is really fairly basic. Rather than seriously undertake substantive improvements with staying power, consequently removing the parent/education consumer motivation to depart traditional public education, school districts, boards, and unions are focused upon eliminating any competition/alternative. In this manner, the unions seek to preserve their source of funding: membership dues. Of course, they will cloak it all in propaganda about it all being "for the students."
