KIPP Teachers Organize

"Teachers at 2 Charter Schools Plan to Join Union, Despite Notion of Incompatibility"

The New York Times reported earlier this week that teachers at a KIPP school in Brooklyn have joined the UFT (the United Federation of Teachers, New York City's teacher union). Read the article here.

It seems that teachers at this school feel that their working conditions (which at KIPP schools in general are typically recognized as strenuous, to put it mildly) make teaching there unsustainable, leading to high teacher turnover and ultimately negatively impacting students' education. In addition, teachers want to make sure they can express their views on educational matters without fear of losing their jobs (see Leo Casey's post on Edwize for that one).

KIPP is a darling of a certain faction of the education reform community, so this displeases many...Some believe that "A union contract is actually at odds with a charter school” (Jeanne Allen, executive director of the Center for Education Reform, a Washington group that supports charter schools). For the record, AFT (the American Federation of Teachers, UFT's parent organization) and its affiliates do not, and have organized teachers at charter schools in other regions of the country, as well as opening and running charter schools of their own
(check out this AFT press release or this EdWeek Teacher Beat post for just a bit more information).

Regardless of whether one believes that charter schools and teachers unions are incompatible, my favorite response to the development is Alexander Russo's: "I guess this is what happens when your teachers get past the starry-eyed hero worship stage, or when your network of schools gets beyond a certain size."

So some feel this is inevitable...I wonder about the collective impact of this type of individual charter school teacher organization on the future of the charter school movement, and on the future of education reform in general.

1.22.09 Update: I also enjoyed Ezra Klein's posting

Labels: charter, KIPP, union

A Couple Interesting New Reports...

New reports are out on both early childhood education and Advanced Placement (AP) courses. Given that both are on the chopping blocks in many districts thank to budget cuts, this research could be particularly timely…

Check out the National Early Literacy Panel’s new report "Developing Early Literacy" (click here to open the executive summary, and here to open the full report, both as PDFs).

Or read through a College Board report on the college outcomes AP coursework (click here to open the report as a PDF).

And note that the economy is impacting education not only through government budgets…even in spite of the recent report on the positive impact of AP courses, the College Board is cutting several AP exams, most notably Italian (see this New York Times article for more information).

Labels: AP, early childhood, research