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The United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) has left teachers and workers defenseless in the face of these attacks. At an April 24 meeting called for teachers given RIF notices, union officials repeated the refrain that the Obama administration’s stimulus money will be enough to save their positions, if only Superintendent Ramon Cortines would spend it all this year instead of spreading it out over two years.

The notion that there’s enough money in the stimulus package to save all the teachers’ jobs is disingenuous at best. In reality, the total amount of funding for the state of California to offset cuts in education is $4.875 billion.

This money is to be allocated statewide, and is not to be used exclusively for the preservation of teachers’ jobs. The Obama administration has made clear that further funding will be made conditional on the implementation of right-wing education reforms, including increased testing and merit pay for teachers.

The UTLA has done everything in its power to ensure that this so-called protest against the budget cuts will be as painless as possible for the local school district. In addition to the fact that it is limited to a single day and has been announced weeks ahead of time so that school administrators can make advance preparations, it will also take place on a testing day, when teachers are not needed in the classroom and can be easily replaced by exam proctors.

The absurdity of expecting results from a one-day “work stoppage” (the union refuses to even say “strike”), announced weeks before undertaking it, was not lost on one first grade teacher, who asked, “Why is it a one-day strike? Why aren’t we striking until we get what we want?”

Greene is up to his old “cherry picking” tricks here, citing the one study which supports his position while ignoring the many which do not. There is a small body of scholarly literature on the subject, and Hoxby’s essay is clearly the minority view; there are more noteworthy studies showing a positive relationship between teacher unionism and educational achievement. Lala Steelman, Brian Powell and Robert Carini, “Do Teacher Unions Hinder Educational Performance? Lesson Learned from State SAT and ACT Scores” [Harvard Educational Review. Volume 70, No. 4. Winter 2000.] makes that case based on correlations between the presence of teacher unions engaged in collective bargaining and high SAT/ACT scores, and F. Howard Nelson and Michael Rosen, “Are Teacher Unions Hurting American Education? A State-by-State Analysis of the Impact of Collective Bargaining on Student Performance” [Milwaukee, WI: Institute for Wisconsin’s Future: October 1996.],  makes that case based on correlations between the presence of teacher unions engaged in collective bargaining and high SAT and NAEP scores.

Two reviews of the scholarly literature are available on the Internet: Robert Carini’s “Teachers Unions and Student Achievement” [in School Reform Proposals: The Research Evidence. Alex Molnar, editor. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing, 2002. ; the link is to a version of the chapter available from the Educational Policy Studies Laboratory of Arizona State University ] and the essay of Randall Eberts, Kevin Hollenbeck and Joe Stone, “Teacher Unions: Outcomes and Reform Initiatives” [University of Oregon Department of Economics Working Papers]. Both conclude that the weight of the scholarly literature supports a positive relationship between teacher unionism and educational achievement.

California's powerful teachers unions, who hotly oppose any changes to existing laws. The rules protecting teacher jobs are so effective that

Months later—after quietly organizing and pressing their peers to sign union cards—the formation of Chicago’s first charter school teachers union is but a step away.

Should the state’s Labor Board rule that the teachers followed protocol in their bid to unionize, they will begin crafting a new labor contract that will largely come to define their sought after “voice” in school decision making.

The nature of that contract and how closely it resembles traditional teachers union contracts will be closely watched by national observers, from advocates to agnostics in the highly partisan world of teachers unions and charter schools. Simply put, a tiny sliver of the nearly 4,000 charter schools across America are unionized and there are precious few examples of how to marry job protections and other benefits afforded to unionized teachers with the operational flexibility that charters like to trumpet.

“It’s been all consuming just getting the cards signed,” says Emily Mueller, a Spanish teacher at the Chicago International-Northtown campus who played a central role in the union drive. “Just talking about contract issues seems like a major relief.”

Some charters, like the Green Dot schools that originated in Los Angles, started up as unionized shops and feature lightweight contracts that give principals substantial hiring and firing authority in exchange for higher teacher pay and clear pathways for influencing curricular and other educational choices.

Other charters, like two schools started recently by the United Federation of Teachers in New York, have looked for new ways to run schools while sticking to the rules laid out in the traditional UFT contract. Indeed, teachers at the schools have staggered their class schedules to provide a longer school day for children—without violating the limits on working hours spelled out in their union contract.

State law requires a simple majority for the establishment of a union, and the teachers will seek immediate recognition and bargaining rights under the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Administrators (Chicago ACTS) flag.

About 1,500 students, collectively, are enrolled at schools run by Civitas.

Chicago ACTS joins a nationwide network of some 70 charter schools affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers.

The Illinois Federation of Teachers aided in organizing charter schools here, but “the teachers did the bulk of the work themselves,” says IFT spokesperson Gail Purkey. “We provided technical assistance and legal advice.”

Teachers were particularly concerned with high teacher turnover at the schools, says Purkey. Working hours and pay—perennial union issues—will also be key in future negotiations. But Purkey says teachers, more than anything, want a formal way to influence how schools are managed, from professional development decisions to curricular choices.