Charter school owners and operators repeatedly insist that their \u201cinnovative,\u201d \u201cflexible,\u201d \u201cautonomous,\u201d \u201cindependent,\u201d \u201cmarket\u201d character is a strength that purportedly allows them to hire the best teachers and provide the best education arrangements and results possible. But teacher turnover in nonprofit and for-profit charter schools is very high. By far, the main reasons teachers leave charter schools are poor management, poor pay, poor benefits, and poor working conditions.2<\/a><\/sup> Teacher retention remains a problem in many charter schools, which is why countless charter schools regularly hire uncertified and inexperienced teachers. Some states with charter school laws do not even require teachers to be certified or licensed.<\/p>\n On January 7, 2022, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel<\/em> reported that:<\/p>\n Teaching staff at Carmen Schools of Science and Technology \u2014 a group of six charter schools in Milwaukee [Wisconsin]\u2014 are attempting to unionize<\/a>, and CEO Jennifer Lopez says she won’t stand in their way. If successful, organizers believe they will be the first to unionize an independent charter school in Wisconsin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Given the well-established opposition to teacher unions by charter school owners and operators, CEO Lopez\u2019s assertion that \u201cshe won\u2019t stand\u201d in the way of teachers forming a union needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Does Lopez have a trick up her sleeve? Does she think the union drive is too powerful to stop? Does she believe that mis-rendering the issue of unionization as \u201can individual decision\u201d will blunt the drive to form a union? Neoliberal forces routinely use language like forming a union should be a \u201cfully informed, personal choice\u201d to create space for disinforming workers and blocking unionization efforts. Regardless, union \u201corganizers are asking the nearly 200 teachers, social workers and specialists of Carmen Schools to sign union authorization cards.\u201d And in all likelihood, the majority will.<\/p>\n One of the most basic and revealing demands of teachers is for better pay and workloads capped at 40 hours a week. This last point is particularly significant because many, if not most, nonprofit and for-profit charter schools have longer school days and school years than public schools, and they generally pay their teachers noticeably less than their public school counterparts. In addition, longer school days and years do not generally translate into improved academic achievement. More time in school does not necessarily produce more learning and achievement. Every year, numerous charter schools from coast to coast fail and close due to poor academic performance. Many others perform poorly for years but are not closed. So much for \u201cmarket accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n Pointing to other long-standing problems in Carmen Charter Schools, teachers are also demanding that teachers and students have a greater say in decision-making. Workplaces characterized by top-down exclusionary decision-making processes\u2014a key feature of neoliberal managerialism\u2014are never a good place to work. It is one of the main reasons workers leave their job. \u201cInput\u201d and \u201cconsultation\u201d are not the same as real decision-making power, which all workers have a right to. The absence of a real say in things naturally leaves a bad taste in the mouths of workers. \u201cI see so many passionate, dedicated, and excellent Carmen staff come and go,” Carmen\u00a0Southeast High School teacher Leland Pan said in a news release. A main union organizer highlighted “massive, concerning turnover” as a major reason for fighting for a union. High teacher turnover rates undermine stability, collegiality, continuity, and learning, not to mention the ability to form a union. What parent wants to send their kid to a school where teachers are constantly coming and going?<\/p>\n It is important to stress that the just struggle of workers in Carmen Charter Schools is the result of poor working conditions that characterize much of the crisis-prone charter school sector. Thousands of workers in nonprofit and for-profit charter schools across the country are disempowered and have no meaningful say in their own working conditions. The conditions in Carmen Charter Schools in Wisconsin are not unique. Instability and anarchy are widespread.<\/p>\n The only way for workers to improve their lives and the success of their students is by joining together to fight for their rights. No one else is going to fight for their rights. It is an illusion to think that neoliberals and privatizers exist to affirm the rights of workers, which is why neoliberals and privatizers spend a lot of time promoting \u201cfeel-good\u201d rhetoric but routinely engage in anti-social policies and practices in real life.<\/p>\n This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About 3.5 million students currently attend roughly 7,400 privately-operated charter schools in the U.S. This represents around 7% of all students and 7% of all schools in the country. Unlike public schools, all charter schools are run by unelected individuals. Approximately 90% of these outsourced privatized schools have no teacher unions. The vast majority of [\u2026]<\/p>\n The post Poor Working Conditions Widespread In Charter Schools<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[183,32,1093,1667,38712],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465728"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465728"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":467313,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465728\/revisions\/467313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/51aJlTn5R8L._SX331_BO1204203200_-1.jpg\")
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