The Teachers Movement Goes Virtual
Source: The Atlantic
RACHEL M. COHEN
When West Virginia teachers initiated a nine-day labor strike this past winter, they secured national attention and a 5 percent pay raise. Oklahoma and Kentucky educators followed suit, with Arizona teachers threatening to do the same. Amid all this organizing was another strike threat, not previously reported, last week in California: between teachers in online classrooms and the organization that employs them.
Students enrolled in virtual schools (sometimes called “cyber schools” or “virtual academies”) take their classes online. It’s a small phenomenon, representing less than 1 percent of students, but a fast-growing one. According to the National Education Policy Center, about 279,000 students enrolled in virtual schools in 2016, up from roughly 200,000 in 2012. Education experts have been concerned by the growth of virtual K-12 education, especially virtual charter schools, which are publicly funded and privately managed. U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has touted virtual charter schooling as a particularly ripe area for expansion, emphasizing its flexibility and potential to offer courses that a student’s traditional school might not have. But, in practice, virtual schools, especially charters, have tended to deliver significantly lower academic results than brick-and-mortar ones. “Academic benefits from online charter schools are currently the exception rather than the rule,” wrote the authors of a 2015 report from the Stanford Center for Research on Education Outcomes.
While some teachers gravitate to virtual charters because of the flexibility it offers, salaries can be low, and class sizes are, on average, much larger than in brick-and-mortar charter schools or traditional public schools. (Though virtual teachers don’t have to manage physical classrooms, large class sizes still equate to a heavier workload.) The overwhelming majority of virtual teachers are not unionized. But in 2014, educators at California Virtual Academies (cava), California’s largest network of online charter schools with more than 10,000 students and about 450 teachers, decided to create a union, California Virtual Educators United, under the umbrella of the California Teachers Association. After two years of legal battles, cava recognized the teachers’ union, and starting in September 2016, the parties began negotiating their first contract over salaries, class sizes, and other issues.
The negotiations represent an important test case of how educators might wield power in a future where online education becomes even more common. According to Brianna Carroll, a high-school social-science teacher in Livermore, California, and president of the teachers’ union, bargaining had been slow-going, especially in recent weeks, when negotiators hit an impasse over class size. Educators said the number of students under their supervision had spiraled out of control, with some teachers stuck overseeing virtual classrooms exceeding forty students, and demanded class sizes be capped. “Either you have teachers who are burning themselves out because they’re trying to meet the needs of everyone, or you aren’t meeting the needs of everyone,” Carroll told me. “It’s really one or the other.”
FULL story at link below.
Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/04/will-online-teachers-join-the-strikes/557336/
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (X post from GD)
Now it’s online charter schoolteachers’ turn…
Teachers at California’s Largest Online Charter School Agree to Historic First Union Contract with K12 Inc., Gains for Students and Teachers, Strike Averted
Labor Agreement at K12 Inc.’s California Virtual Academies (CAVA) is a Model for Teachers in Online Charters Nationwide
Simi Valley –- Teachers at one of the nation’s largest online public charter schools, California Virtual Academies (CAVA), which is affiliated with K12 Inc., a publicly traded company (LRN) focused on online learning, have reached agreement with their employer on a precedent-setting first union contract. The tentative agreement provides for student caseload caps and workload language that will help CAVA teachers better provide individual attention to students. The settlement contains increases in wages and establishes a salary schedule that will make CAVA better able to recruit and retain teachers and reduce staff turnover disruptive to learning. Teachers also made improvements in job status language and, for the first time at a K12 Inc. school, will have due process rights and binding arbitration for grievances.
“Organizing teachers in a workplace where we don’t see our peers and where the bargaining unit stretches across a state as large as California isn’t easy, and it also isn’t easy establishing a precedent-setting agreement,” said CAVA teacher and California Virtual Educators United President Brianna Carroll. “We are so proud of the hard work and commitment our teachers made in ensuring that our core values on work status, caseloads, and workload were recognized. We now have a first contract that begins the process of fixing CAVA and ensuring the success of our students and teachers. Our schools here in California and other online schools have had very little input from the teachers on the frontline. This agreement will change that and allow those who work most closely with students a greater say in shaping the curriculum and school policies.”
California Virtual Educators United was formed by CAVA teachers in 2013 and is affiliated with the California Teachers Association (CTA). Although enrollment has declined recently in the wake of news accounts of a $168 million penalty levied by the State of California against K12 Inc. for alleged fraud and financial abuse that hurt students, CAVA has enrolled as many as 15,000 students in 42 of California’s 48 counties in recent years. The teacher bargaining unit has ranged from just under 500 teachers to 750 at its peak.
In November, CVEU members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if the union’s bargaining team could not reach an agreement. Inspired by statewide teacher strikes in West Virginia and Oklahoma, CAVA teachers were prepared to walkout this week if an agreement had not been reached. The tentative agreement will now go to CVEU members for a ratification vote at the end of April.
Virtual charter schools, where classes are taught online, are publicly funded and often managed by for-profit education management organizations. Last year, online schools enrolled approximately 300,000 students nationwide, according to the National Education Policy Center. This is an increase from 199,000 in the 2011-2012 school year.
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CVEU is a chapter of the 325,000-member California Teachers Association, which is affiliated with the 3 million-member National Education Association.
