Dive Brief:
- Faculty at Cesar Chavez Prep Middle School, voted 31 to 2 last Thursday to form a union, a decision which the school's board and leadership are accepting, reports The Washington Post. Chavez will become the first charter in the district to form a union.
- Union advocates often argue that lack of a collective bargaining body means charter schools get more leeway in deciding to change aspects of teachers' pay and work schedules without necessarily having to consider faculty interests. This situation — where teachers are often overworked and not paid well — could explain one reason why the teacher turnover rate in charter schools tends to be much higher than that of traditional public schools, as shown by statistics from Education Week.
- As charter school turnover rates remain high — with 1 out of 5 new teachers leaving across all schools leaving the classroom in five years — administrators who want to prevent frequent faculty turnover can consider what unionizing teachers at this school and others are demanding in order to make their jobs more appealing.
Dive Insight:
Schools that are in low-income areas are known to deal with high teacher turnover rates, often because of lack of resources, inferior facilities, and little faculty support. But truly, both public and charter schools across the nation struggle with teacher retention in any area depending upon whether administrators are paying attention to exactly what the faculty want. This reality is highlighted when looking at a comparison of public district versus charter schools; charter schools, which get greater leniency in experimenting with teacher schedules and pay, actually have a more difficult time retaining their teachers. Specifically, statistics from Education Week show that though the turnover rate in charters has dropped some since 2008, it still hovers at around 18.5% which is about 3% higher than public schools.
One of the more common impressions of charter schools is that they operate under the theme of "churn and burn," which is essentially the strategy of overworking teachers with little pay and then hiring new ones. As this reputation has persisted with charters, some administrators have already taken steps to get ahead and improve retention, such as Cesar Chavez, where the leadership is accepting of teachers' unionization efforts. Some of the benefits these teachers are seeking could point to what exactly administrators could consider giving faculty in the first place — these include job security, greater autonomy and respect in decision-making, as well as some salary bargaining abilities.