The Times has a good piece today about the unionization and de-unionization efforts taking place at KIPP charter schools in New York City. The article, by Jennifer Medina, contains the clearest explanation I’ve seen to date of why, exactly, the teachers at KIPP AMP in Brooklyn felt they needed union representation. As reported by the Times, the following management policies were the biggest issues:

  • pay was docked after three sick or personal days
  • teachers were not given advance notice of required staff meetings
  • teachers were not allowed to ask questions during staff meetings
  • teachers were required to submit daily lesson plans, but did not receive any feedback on them

The Public Employee Relations Board is expected to certify the KIPP AMP union this week. For background on the complicated tango between teachers’ unions and charter schools, check out my feature on “The Education Wars” from our March print issue.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.